As previously noted, Donald Trump will briefly visit Salt Lake City Monday to announce cuts in the size of two national monuments in Utah. Juliet Eilperin reported Thursday that the size of those cuts will be gigantic:
President Trump plans to shrink Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent and reduce Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument nearly by half, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post that show the Utah sites would be cut even more than administration officials previously signaled. [...]
The new proclamations, which also will split up both monuments into several smaller ones, would cut the overall size of Bears Ears from 1.35 million acres to 201,397 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante from nearly 1.9 million acres to 997,490 acres. [...]
Grand Staircase-Escalante would be split into three areas known as Grand Staircase National Monument, Kaiparowits National Monument and Escalante Canyons National Monument. Bears Ears will be divided into Indian Creek National Monument and the Shash Jaa National Monument, the latter of which will include two well-known ruins, Moon House and Doll House.
A senior staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund says a lawsuit will be filed immediately after Trump’s announcement on behalf of five American Indian tribes that were heavily involved over many years in getting Bears Ears designated as a monument. President Obama made the designation last year.
According to many legal experts, the cuts won’t stand a court test because, they say, the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976 only allows Congress to make such changes. Not everyone agrees.
If the cuts were to pass legal muster, it would put a dozen or so of the largest of the 117 existing national monuments at risk of being reduced on the whim of whomever is in the White House.