by Amy Kenney | Jan 8, 2020 | Uncategorized
Our country needs more—not fewer—marine national monuments
Imagine standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, marveling at ancient layers of rock, the distant ribbon of the Colorado River, and the purity of an immense environment teeming with flora and fauna. Now imagine shrugging and stepping aside as mining and drilling companies move in to destroy eons of geologic artistry.
Almost unthinkable. Yet something similar could happen to some of the country’s most spectacular and biodiverse ocean environments if the Trump Administration follows through on its threats to weaken or eliminate protections in some of our country’s marine national monuments.
According to NOAA, these areas, including those targeted by the White House—the Pacific Remote Islands, Rose Atoll, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts marine national monuments—were created “to protect…abundant and diverse coral, fish, and seabird populations; facilitate exploration and scientific research; and promote public education regarding the value of these national treasures.”
That value is enormous. Marine monuments and other highly protected areas of the ocean are safe havens for sea life to feed, breed, and flourish. Even better, these whales, dolphins, sea turtles, fish, corals and other organisms swim and spread outside the protected areas’ boundaries, enriching nearby fisheries and ecosystems.
Scientists tell us the ocean is disproportionately harmed by climate change, absorbing more carbon and in most cases heating up faster than land areas. An increasing number of studies show that the wildlife in safeguarded areas—and in fact, the areas themselves—are more resilient to climate change than are unprotected regions, and that they recover faster after disruptions such as heat waves and hurricanes. With the global climate crisis unfolding in real time, the ocean and its creatures need places to heal and recover. And they need it now.
For coastal residents, tourists, communities, and economies, the benefits of ocean sanctuaries are significant: cleaner seas, more species thriving, and an ecosystem in balance. This in turn helps seafood businesses, anglers, fishing charters, whale watching outfitters, and so many others.
The positive and widespread impact of ocean safe havens calls to mind the words of President Theodore Roosevelt when he designated the Grand Canyon as a national monument in 1908. “You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you.”
He was the first of 17 presidents—nine republicans and eight democrats—to use the 1906 Antiquities Act to safeguard extraordinary expanses of land or ocean. These decisions were not made lightly, and many of the designations—including the Grand Canyon—came over the objections of corporate interests bent on exploiting the lands or waters for short-term profit. It is worth pointing out that, over the long term, none of the industries that opposed land or marine protections suffered major declines as a result of losing those fights.
It’s clear that the U.S. needs more, not fewer, marine monuments, and that these areas should cover a broader range of habitats, including seagrass beds, kelp and mangrove forests, deep-sea corals and more. Right now less than three percent of the ocean worldwide is fully protected—meaning that no extractive activity is allowed.
That’s a paltry number, considering what’s at stake. Aside from the benefits noted above, the ocean harbors a mind-boggling array of irreplaceable life. These include the world’s oldest known living organism—a species of black coral that began growing more than 4,200 years ago, around the time ancient Egyptians were building the pyramids. Today that coral is soldiering on in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the northwest Hawaiian Islands, protected—for now—from human destruction. Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, the only marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, is home to corals that thrive more than 12,000 feet beneath the surface as part of a diverse and extraordinary ecosystem. The monument’s signature canyons and seamounts conspire to steer currents that carry food for whales, dolphins, turtles, sharks, and many more species that live in or migrate through the area.
Those are just a snapshot of the wonders and benefits found within our marine monuments. Although most of us will never stand at the edge of these places and marvel at their beauty, we can all see the value in protecting them—for ocean life and for us, our children, and grandchildren.
By reducing or eliminating existing monuments, our leaders would essentially be putting the interests of a few over the wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people and the planet they call home. Americans wouldn’t tolerate that in the Grand Canyon, and we shouldn’t stand for it in our ocean either.
by jocelyn | Aug 23, 2019 | Uncategorized
Plan Undermines Standards for National Monument Protections, Ignores Public Opposition and Ongoing Litigation Over Reduced Boundaries
ESCALANTE, Utah (August 23, 2019) – Today, local and national groups, businesses and globally-respected scientist organizations, denounced the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) release of management plans for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument as another step toward undermining protections for Americans’ national monuments and other protected public lands.
Top failures of the management plan released today:
The plan opens up hundreds of thousands of acres of the original Monument (designated in 1996) to drilling and mining, while the administration’s illegal reduction of the Monument (decreasing it by nearly half) is still being actively litigated and while the Government Accountability Office is investigating whether the planning process itself is in violation of long-standing spending law.
It is the result of a rushed and closed-door process, opening up land for inappropriate development with little input from the public.
The plan changes standards for the management of all national monuments—affecting treasured places across the country—and doesn’t even protect what remains of Grand Staircase-Escalante.
This reckless plan doesn’t protect Grand Staircase-Escalante or the businesses that depend on it, and sets an unacceptable precedent for national monuments across the country. Our irreplaceable public lands are the envy of the world, and the law requires that they be managed on behalf of all Americans.
Organizational quotes
Nicole Croft, Executive Director, Grand Staircase-Escalante Partners
“The BLM’s management plan attempts to cement the largest roll-back in public lands protections in American history. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has demonstrated its worth time and time again, through contributions to science, personal discovery and significant economic benefits to our local communities. These lands belong to every American, not just a few special interests.”
Joe & Suzanne Catlett, Nemo’s Restaurant Group, LLC
“No new Management Plans should be considered or released prior to the outcomes currently pending before the Courts. In our opinion this action is disingenuous, completed recklessly and does not represent the true best interest of this county or the American people. As owner/operators of an Escalante, Utah Main street business, and like other businesses in Garfield County, we have seen an immediate and direct decrease in our sales and revenue compared to years prior. This is a direct result of the BLM attempting to rush management plans on an Executive action that remains heavily litigated, may be reversed, and continues to impact the local economy.”
Nathan Waggoner, Escalante Outfitters
“Escalante Outfitters and many other businesses in our gateway communities rely on the protection and preservation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to continue to grow our businesses and support our communities. We are deeply disappointed in the BLM’s new management plan because it turns a blind eye to the concerns of businesses who support a wilderness ethic and it caters to a small band of special interest groups who want to exploit our public lands for short term profits. Given that the litigation to restore the monument to its rightful size is still on-going, the new management plan is a waste of taxpayers money and detrimental to one of America’s last great expanses of wilderness.”
Blake Spalding, co-owner, Hell’s Backbone Grill and Farm in Boulder, Utah
“In our restaurant we’re talking to guests every day who have travelled from far and wide to enjoy the unspoiled protected public lands of Southern Utah. They desperately want these landscapes preserved, as they were intended to be when they were thoughtfully designated as protected Monuments. The new management plan is a travesty that will devastate the tranquil gateway communities and businesses that were thriving before this incursion.”
David Polly, Immediate Past President, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
“If something’s not broke, you shouldn’t try to fix it. Grand Staircase-Escalante has been one of the most productive areas for paleontology in the last quarter century. The Monument has been a spectacular success in providing scientific value to the entire world. These new management plans are unnecessary and have already cost taxpayers more than $1 million, a fortune that could have produced thousands of more finds.”
William H. Doelle, President and CEO, Archaeology Southwest
“There is no question that Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was legitimately established through the authority granted by the Antiquities Act of 1906. There is no question that this magnificent landscape is also a cultural one, bearing unparalleled evidence of people’s lives over millennia. What this deeply flawed plan reveals, like the recently released Bears Ears plan, is a troubling question—do national monuments even mean anything anymore? We believe they do, and we stand with our partners in pushing for proper and lawful protections for Grand Staircase-Escalante and all our national monuments.”
Brian Sybert, Executive Director, Conservation Lands Foundation
“Grand Staircase was designated more than twenty years ago, and its boundaries were later ratified by Congressional action. This plan is an attempt to further this administration’s reckless push to open treasured, irreplaceable lands to destructive mining and drilling—despite public outcry and before the courts have a chance to weigh in.”
Heidi McIntosh, Managing Attorney of Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountains Office
“Grand Staircase was an exceptionally successful national monument until President Trump rode into town and unlawfully shredded it. These protected lands have been a boon for the local economy and a treasure trove of dinosaur discoveries and new scientific insights precisely because they are protected. We’re disgusted, but not surprised, upon seeing Trump’s latest plans. While the Trump Administration is rushing a new scheme through to let mining companies and ranchers harm vast swaths of Grand Staircase for a quick buck, we’re in court working to stop them. These new plans won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on if the court rules that Trump violated the Antiquities Act and the Constitution.”
Phil Hanceford, Attorney, The Wilderness Society
“The Trump administration continues to steamroll forward with illegal actions to open nearly half the monument to drilling, and mining and other destructive activities. This planning process is another blatant example of the train headed down a barricaded track,” said Phil Hanceford, an attorney with The Wilderness Society. “While the BLM continues to disregard the law, the public, and the harm these plans will cause, we will fight in court to return the monument to its original boundary and ensure the entirety is managed in a way that protects this outstanding resource.”
Mary O’Brien, Utah Forests Program Director, Grand Canyon Trust
“The proposals to add more roads, more cattle grazing, more fuel extraction, more non-native grass seeding, more OHV use in wilderness study areas – it’s as if the BLM tried to promote every damaging activity they could imagine.”
Theresa Pierno, President and CEO for National Parks Conservation Association
“From ancient dinosaur fossils to ascending plateaus and winding canyons developed over millions of years, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is unparalleled. But now, it’s being taken from the public and handed to the highest bidder. Grand Staircase-Escalante serves as a critical connection to three of our country’s national park sites – Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef National Parks and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. It shields rock formations and wildlife from harm and provides visitors with opportunities to experience intense quiet and solitude. Despite the monument’s value to the region and the millions of people who have fought to protect it, the Trump administration is green lighting destructive development, including mining and drilling, that will forever change this landscape and all we stand to learn from and experience here.”
Rose Marcario, President and CEO, Patagonia
“The executive order eliminating protections for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was illegal and no management plan for these lands should proceed until the resolution of the lawsuits. If this administration’s reckless agenda is not stopped, it will lead to the destruction of a national treasure protected for over two decades that enjoys support from hunters and hikers as well as local businesses and communities. And even more troubling, it sets a dangerous precedent for the future of all public lands and waters. These wild and wonderful landscapes should not be auctioned off to the highest bidder, and we have every confidence the courts will rule in favor of the plaintiffs and the original boundaries of the National Monument will be restored.”
Kya Marienfeld, Wildlands Attorney, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
“This illegal plan puts a fine point on the Trump administration’s rapacious vision for America’s public lands. This is a plan of plunder: authorizing rampant chaining of pinyon-juniper forests, unbridled energy development, and a free-for-all of off-road vehicle abuse. Grand Staircase-Escalante is one of the nation’s public land crown jewels; it is the quintessentially wild red rock landscape that people from across the country and around the world think of when they dream of visiting southern Utah. President Trump broke the law and defied Congress with his illegal order reducing the monument, and SUWA and its partners will persist with our fight in court to undo this damage and restore full protections to the entire monument ecosystem.”
Lena Moffitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Our Wild America campaign
“The bottom line is that the Trump administration acted illegally when it stripped the lands of Grand Staircase-Escalante of national monument status. With this plan, Bernhardt’s Interior is clearly trying to let in mining and drilling before a court can overturn the rollbacks.”
Nicole Ghio, Senior Fossil Fuels Program Manager at Friends of the Earth
“The new management plan for Grand Staircase Escalante ignores the overwhelming opposition to mining and drilling on this land. Bernhardt’s push to hand the Monument over to fossil fuel interests is possibly illegal and ignores the ongoing court battles. BLM’s plan is a rushed attempt to undercut established environmental protections.”
by mfa-admin | Jul 26, 2019 | Uncategorized
MOAB, Utah (July 26, 2019)—Utah’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) continues to rush forward a plan for the illegally reduced Bears Ears National Monument that completely ignores the more than one million acres removed by an unlawful Executive Order and leaves most of the culturally and scientifically significant lands unprotected. In a final plan released today, the BLM proposes to manage even the remaining fifteen percent of Bears Ears National Monument in a way that doesn’t sufficiently protect cultural resources and sacred sites, leaving them more vulnerable to destruction than ever before.
Just as numerous reports have shown that the reductions were in fact focused on drilling and mining, this proposed plan shows that the BLM misled the public when claiming that a reduced boundary would allow them to better manage and protect what they considered to be the most important historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest monument objects in the Bears Ears region.
The planning process was started under former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke despite protests from Congress, and newly appointed Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has continued to ignore calls by Congress to halt planning while also disregarding active litigation challenging the Trump administration’s initial executive action.
Secretary Zinke claimed in a monuments review interim report that a reduced boundary would allow the agency to “concentrate preservation resources,” and in his final report to President Trump, he claimed to be concerned that “that increased visitation can threaten the objects…monuments that span up to a million acres or more are difficult to protect.” This final management plan proves that this was never about resources or practical ability to protect sites, but about a concerted effort to remove protections at every opportunity.
The nearly final plan released by the BLM fails in a number of ways:
- Protection of cultural resources is the primary reason for Bears Ears monument designation. However, the plan chooses several management actions that would have significant impacts on cultural resources. The agencies highlight that they seek to protect identified cultural sites, but the vast majority of the monument has not yet been surveyed for cultural resources.
- Bears Ears is home to world-class recreation opportunities. These opportunities should be preserved, but also managed so they don’t impact monument resources like cultural and paleontological sites. A Recreation Area Management Plan is scheduled to be implemented 3 years after the cultural resource management plan is put in place, meaning it will likely be at least 5 years from the final decision—a timeframe that would result in damage and degradation.
- Bears Ears is home to some of the most unique paleontological resources in the world. Under the agencies’ preferred plan, surface-disturbing activities—including rights-of-way and potential new off-road vehicle routes—would be allowed in areas with high potential for yielding fossils, and fossil-bearing areas that are currently protected would be opened to development. The agencies’ plan provides few restrictions on camping, target shooting, hiking and biking around paleontological resources. Moreover, under the agencies’ preferred plan monitoring would only take place annually and only loss of or damage to significant fossil resources would trigger mitigation measures. This would violate federal law as Section 6302 of the PRPA requires agencies to conduct surveys regardless of the potential impact to fossils from other uses.
Quotes from local, national, and scientific organizations:
Neal Clark, Wildlands Program Director, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance:
“As though reducing Bears Ears National Monument by nearly 85% wasn’t damaging enough, now the BLM’s plan ignores the concerns of Tribes, archaeologists, conservationists, and the vast majority of the public by rolling back protections of the remaining 15%, creating a monument in name only. This plan means that one of America’s richest cultural landscapes continues to lack the protections it deserves.”
Phil Hanceford, Director of Agency Policy & Planning, The Wilderness Society:
“The BLM is moving rapidly with limited public input towards their goal of stripping protections from some of the nation’s most treasured and sensitive lands. The Bears Ears region continues to be threatened by the hasty, illegal, and un-scientific effort by a few to open as much of our public lands to drilling and mining as possible. People should be outraged.”
Brian Sybert, Executive Director, Conservation Lands Foundation:
“This rushed and reckless plan ignores Tribes tied to this sacred and irreplaceable cultural landscape. It also ignores the majority of Westerners who opposed slashing its size and who understand the value our public lands hold for recreation, science and rural economies that depend on them for the long-term. It puts to rest any argument about the administration’s real motives in rolling back protections for Bears Ears and millions of other acres in the West: they are opening the door to development for their friends in industry–no matter the price for everyone else.”
Tim Peterson, Cultural Landscapes Program Director, Grand Canyon Trust:
“National monuments are meant to protect our shared history and heritage while leaving a legacy for future generations. The Trump administration not only defiled our shared history by unlawfully reducing Bears Ears, they’re showing contempt for our legacy by choosing at every turn in their proposed plan to give protection short-shrift. The way in which they’ve added the insult of this detestable plan to the injury of slashing Bears Ears is deeply disturbing, and it cannot stand.”
- David Polly, Immediate Past President, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology:
“To further his own political ends, Trump cut out most of the fossil sites for which Bears Ears was created, a loss to science and a loss every American. He did not have the authority to make the cuts and the management plans must be rewritten to protect the entire monument. They should be suspended until the courts have ruled on the boundaries like Congress itself has requested.”
Rose Marcario, CEO and President, Patagonia:
“The Executive Order abolishing Bears Ears was illegal and no management plan for these lands should proceed until resolution of the lawsuits. The President’s effort to reduce Bears Ears’ boundaries was done at the behest of mining and oil and gas industries. And this plan is another demonstration of this administration’s preference for extractive industry profit at the expense of the American people. Bears Ears contains iconic landscapes, sacred places, and priceless artifacts and this plan puts all of them under threat. Not to mention this is a colossal waste of time because BLM will have to create a plan for the full Bears Ears as originally designated after we win the lawsuit.”
Heidi McIntosh, Managing Attorney of Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountains Office:
“If we win the legal fight to restore Bears Ears National Monument, this plan will just be 800 pages of wasted effort. Even in the parts of Bears Ears that President Trump left intact, he’s planning on putting destructive activities before the American public’s interests. Bears Ears is not the kind of place for chaining thousands of acres of forest or stringing up utility lines. These are wild, sweeping monument lands.”
Erik Murdock, Policy Director, Access Fund:
“The Bears Ears region deserves landscape-scale protections. The reduction of Bears Ears National Monument is a direct threat to the Bears Ears landscape, traditional values and recreation opportunities. The region contains some of the best sandstone rock climbing in the world because of its rock quality and inspirational setting. Access Fund believes that an appropriate management plan should be developed after the litigation is resolved and the boundaries of the monument are reinstated.”
Colin O’Mara, President and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation:
“The illegal decimation of Bears Ears National Monument opens up ancestral lands of the Navajo, Hopi, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Zuni to development that will likely degrade critical wildlife habitat, fragment migration corridors, and potentially expose southern Utah communities to unacceptable pollution and health risks. Now the management plan for the meager remnants of the original monument simply pours salt in the open wounds of the tens of thousands of tribal leaders and citizens who fought for decades to conserve these sacred lands.”
Theresa Pierno, President and CEO for National Parks Conservation Association:
“This management plan is an insult to the public, who overwhelmingly spoke out in favor of protecting Bears Ears— and all our national monuments. Today’s plan opens the monument to damaging uses that carelessly put troves of scientific resources, sacred spaces, and adjacent national park landscapes in jeopardy. Our parks don’t exist in isolation, and the administration’s plan ignores the long-recognized threats to parks from harmful activities outside their borders, putting at risk their air and water quality, dark night skies and expansive viewsheds, as well as the multi-million-dollar economy they support. The only management plan acceptable is one that encompasses Bears Ears’ entire landscape and protects the values and resources for which the monument was originally and legally created.”
Katherine Malone-France, Chief Preservation Officer, National Trust for Historic Preservation:
“This monument management plan is fundamentally flawed and premature. The National Trust and other plaintiffs are actively challenging President Trump’s unprecedented rollback of the monument’s land area by 85 percent. The plan should not be finalized before the litigation is complete. Given that the plan only considers the management needs of the much smaller—and currently contested—footprint, it is not a credible document. The plan also falls far short of providing a framework for proper stewardship of a landscape that holds deep significance for multiple tribes. It completely lacks appropriate measures to ensure protection of the significant cultural and historic resources that prompted the national monument designation in the first place and appears to leave the resources with even less protection than they had before the monument was designated. We will continue to push for the restoration of the Bears Ears National Monument to its original boundaries, and for a comprehensive management plan that truly protects the resources on the land that tell the stories of more than 12,000 years of human history.”
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by jocelyn | Mar 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
The U.S. House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing last week to demonstrate the extent of the Trump Administration’s attempts to ignore Native American Tribes, science, and local communities in the pursuit of eliminating protections for more than 2 million acres of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
Thankfully, new proposals would restore Grand Staircase-Escalante, expand Bears Ears to what was originally envisioned by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, and prevent attacks on all national monuments in the future.
Now is our chance to urge lawmakers to support these bills!
Thousands of important cultural, archeological, and scientific sites are at risk in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, and the Trump Administration has laid the groundwork for many other landscapes to be put in similar danger. While tribes and other monument supporters fight these illegal actions in court, we need Congress to step up and make sure this never happens again.
We’ve already seen some encouraging signs of the tide turning in Washington DC, including real bipartisan support for conservation. This is a key moment to stand up for priceless cultural and scientific resources and America’s shared natural heritage.
Please ask your members of Congress to help move these bills forward today!
by jocelyn | Feb 14, 2019 | Uncategorized
Our national monuments and public lands and waters help define who we are as a nation by telling the story of our shared cultural, natural, and historic heritage. Since President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law, 17 Presidents – 9 Republicans and 8 Democrats – have used it to protect cherished places across our country.
Despite the undeniable benefits of our national monuments and against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Americans, President Trump illegally attempted to dismantle Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in southern Utah. His unprecedented proclamations eliminated over 2 million acres of public land protections and opened these treasured lands up to mining and drilling claims within the original boundaries of the national monuments.
While these actions are currently being challenged in the courts, Congress took the first step towards acting on behalf of the majority of Americans by solidifying and expanding protections for our treasured national monuments. Two important bills were recently introduced:
The ANTIQUITES Act of 2019 (S. 367/H.R. 1050): Introduced by Senator Udall and Congresswoman Haaland, this bill reaffirms that presidents, whether Republican or Democrat, lack the authority to rescind or diminish national monuments. It also codifies the 52 existing national monuments established or expanded under the Antiquities Act since January 1996. In addition, it expands protections for the Bears Ears National Monument and designates new wilderness within Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Río Grande del Norte, and Gold Butte National Monuments to build upon the monument protections in these states. The bill would also create a $100 million fund to improvement the management and conservation of national monuments.
The Bears Ears Expansion and Respect for Sovereignty Act (BEARS Act, HR 871): Introduced by Congressman Gallego and Congresswoman Haaland, this bill proposes to expand the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument from the current 1.35-million-acre monument designated by President Obama in 2016 to 1.9 million acres. The 1.9-million-acre boundary is the original boundary proposal by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition based on a decade-long ethnographic study including traditional knowledge, tribal leader agreements, extensive interviews with spiritual leaders and elders, and GIS mapping verifying the plentiful existence of historic and scientific landmarks or objects. Expanding the monument back to the original concept would protect the full array of over 100,000 culturally and scientifically significant sites from destructive mining or drilling and other threats.
Contact your legislators TODAY and encourage them to support these two important bills.
These bills are an important first step towards restoring and permanently protecting our national monuments for future generations but we need your help! We need every member of Congress to hear from their constituents encouraging them to cosponsor these important bills. Already, more than 100 Senators and Representatives are original cosponsors to the ANTIQUITIES Act of 2019 and 72 Representatives are original cosponsors of the BEARS Act. But we still need more support. Contact your members of Congress today and tell them to stand up for our national monuments!
by jocelyn | Dec 4, 2018 | Uncategorized
One year after Trump’s decimation of Utah monuments, more than 500,000 comments reveal a country still active in fight for U.S. public lands
BLUFF, UTAH – Organizations in Utah announced Tuesday that Americans across the country submitted more than 500,000 comments on the future of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments.
This outsized response carries a clear message that rings as true today as it did one year ago, when President Trump illegally eliminated more than 2 million acres from these two Monuments. The groundswell of support shows that Americans from coast to coast are as fired up now as they were on Day 1 about the loss of protection for these cultural, historic and scientific treasures.
The flood of feedback was submitted during the Interior Department comment periods that closed on November 15th (Bears Ears) and November 30th (Grand Staircase). Americans decried the Administration’s rushed management plans for these downsized national monuments, plans that will determine the future of the Indian Creek and Shash Jaa’ units of Bears Ears National Monument; the Grand Staircase, Kaiparowits, and Escalante Canyons units of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; and lands excised from Grand Staircase-Escalante in the Kanab-Escalante Planning Area.
Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears are both world-renowned hotbeds of paleontological research, world-class destinations for outdoor recreation, and major economic drivers for small businesses in the region. Bears Ears has been home to Hopi, Diné, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni peoples for hundreds of years, protecting countless archaeological, cultural, and natural resources.
The following are statements in response to this nationwide groundswell of support, and the Administration’s rushed and reckless planning process:
“These hasty plans represent an abrupt and drastic reversal of 22 years of conservation management. They do not represent thoughtful, responsible stewardship, but rather a pillaging of our national resources. This effort represents a tremendous waste of precious taxpayer dollars that could have been applied to the real needs of our public lands: law enforcement, scientific study, interpretation and visitor services.” — Nicole Croft, Grand Staircase Escalante Partners
“The number of public comments submitted to the BLM and Forest Service indicate strong support for national monuments and public lands across the United States. The people have spoken and we all want Bears Ears protections restored.”
— Mark Maryboy, Utah Diné Bikéyah
“Bears Ears is an exceedingly fragile and culturally rich area, which is seeing dramatically increased visitation. Bears Ears cannot afford to be managed as a ‘monument in name only’ due to a rushed planning process that prioritizes the status quo over conservation. We were heartened to see hundreds of thousands of people from around the U.S. speak up for real, lasting protections for this internationally significant cultural landscape.” — Josh Ewing, Executive Director, Friends of Cedar Mesa
“The monument is essential for protecting priceless objects that are part of our national heritage — fossils, archaeology, landscapes, and wildlife. In the year since Trump announced reductions to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the data and identification of fossil finds keep pouring out. This kind of research will be impossible if we don’t keep the monument boundaries intact.” – David Polly, Immediate Past President, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
“Official records show that there are 8,480 known archaeological sites in Bears Ears—where only 10 percent of the area has been inventoried by professionals. And now, 73 percent of those sites are left out of the protected area. That’s not a downsizing—that’s a revocation. It’s unconscionable, and it’s the direct opposite of what the tribes and a majority of citizens desire. There is broad support for tribal communities and their deep connections to these natural and cultural landscapes.” – William Doelle, President and CEO, Archaeology Southwest
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