Pr*@%!^#t Donald Trump is expected to go to Utah next month to announce huge reductions in the size of two national monuments on the recommendation of Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke. The 1.88 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, designated by President Bill Clinton in 1996, could be reduced to as little as 700,000 acres. The 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument, designated in 2015 by President Barack Obama, could be chopped to somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 acres. Trump’s trimming back the monuments would be the first such move by a president in more than half a century—since 1964.
Whatever amount of reduction Trump chooses, litigation against the change by environmental advocates and American Indian tribes—some of whom spent decades trying to get Bear Ears designated as a monument—will likely be announced the same day.
Lawsuits would no doubt invoke the 1906 Antiquities Act under which presidents have designated national monuments 151 times, and the 1976 Federal Land Policy Management Act, which added constraints on what the executive branch can do to alter existing monuments. While the outcome of these suits is unpredictable, one thing is certain, a currently sitting president cannot flat-out eliminate monument designations made by previous presidents. Only Congress now has that authority.
On the other side of any litigation against reductions will be many Utah politicians and citizens who have other purposes than protection in mind for this public land, including possibly digging coal out of the Kaiparowits plateau that is part of Grand Staircase-Escalante. Inclusion of the plateau in the monument has been one of the biggest objections raised against it for the past 41 years. Thomas Burr reports:
“The president understands that I have become the resident expert in this area,” Zinke said, “and I have dedicated an enormous amount of time and staff to make sure the local state voice was heard in the confines of following the law and making sure we protect the objects.” [...]
“Zinke is playing a shell game by claiming what’s left of Bears Ears will be bigger than Bryce and Zion combined,” said Scott Groene, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “The reality is that they are removing protections at Bears Ears for an area larger than all five of Utah’s national parks combined, and asking Americans to be happy with it. And then they’re doing it again at Grand Staircase.” [...]
“With that said, it’s highly likely that this decision will be a purely political one, using spin like the ‘larger than Zion and Bryce combined’ to distract folks from seeing the huge cultural landscape they’re attempting to erase protections for,” [Josh Ewing, executive director of the Friends of Cedar Mesa] said, noting that Zion and Bryce are different than Bears Ears because of their distinct geological wonders compared to the monument, which holds a “staggering number of archaeological sites.”
Many foes of these two as well as other monuments are aligned with an evolving movement that began four decades ago to force the federal government to turn over to the states land torn from Native inhabitants in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
They complain that the feds control too much land in the West—65 percent in Utah—that the rules governing use of that land are too restrictive, and that states are financially and otherwise harmed by this ownership. Some argue that the Western states are being unfairly treated because other states, particularly east of the Mississippi River, contain far less federally owned land.
But there is no legal mandate to give this land to the states, and so far efforts to induce huge transfers of federal land have failed. Environmental advocates point out that if the states were to acquire great swathes of federal land, much of it would likely be privatized and ruined for posterity through mineral and energy extraction, pollution, and over-development.
Bears Ears National Monument is especially irksome to those who want the monument shrunk. And especially dear to American Indians—Utes, Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni—all of whom have ancient ties to this land they view as sacred. The tribes, which worked in coalition with one another and non-Indian groups to get Bears Ears designated, have a say in governing the monument, the first time that’s ever been the case. When President Obama announced the monument designation last year, Indian leaders were jubilant, as Robinson Meyer reported in June:
“It actually brought tears to my face,” said Eric Descheenie, a member of the Navajo nation and a congressman in the Arizona House of Representatives. “It’s so hard to even try to add up what this really means. At the end of the day, there’s only a certain place in this entire world, on earth, where we as indigenous peoples belong,” he said of Bears Ears.
Donald Trump is apparently determined to elicit tears of a different sort come December. But there’s probably better than a 50-50 chance that his move to reduce the size of the monuments will be shot down by the courts. And even if he were to succeed, come 2021, a new Democratic president can and should reverse any reductions he approves.