When President Trump issued a proclamation in 2017 reducing the size of two national monuments in southern Utah’s canyon country, it seemed only a matter of time before the drilling rigs, bulldozers, and fleets of ATVs would follow. And now the administration has taken a big step in that direction. At the end of August, the White House released plans to allow drilling, mining, grazing, and other uses on lands formerly protected as part of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments.
Rolling Stone has even warned that strip mining could come to Grand Staircase-Escalante. Nineteen companies have already staked mineral claims on portions of about 900,000 acres excised from the monument by Trump’s executive order in December 2017.
That order is still under court challenge.
Writing in the Harvard Law Review, University of Colorado law professor Mark Squillace says there’s no legal precedent for the reduction of Grand Staircase-Escalante and other national monuments. The tribes and environmental groups that have challenged the withdrawal have a good case, but as Squillace writes, the last word will come from the federal courts, and predicting the outcome of litigation is always fraught with risk. Besides, the case could grind on for years, with appeals sure to follow. The Bureau of Land Management, however, has plans for the formerly protected lands right now.
The agency’s new acting head, William Perry Pendley, has devoted his professional life to selling off public land. Pendley spent nearly 30 years as head of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, advocating for the transfer of federal lands to state and local control. In fact, he’s still the attorney of record for two Utah counties petitioning the feds to allow “multiple use” on the lands stripped from Grand Staircase-Escalante, including oil and gas development, mining and unrestricted grazing. Pendley only started at BLM in July. Two weeks later, Interior Chief (and former oil and gas lobbyist) David Bernhardt quietly elevated him to the role of acting director.
The appointment came just after Congress recessed for the summer, which as Chris D’Angelo noted in the Huffington Post, placed “a man who detests federal land policy at the helm of a bureau that manages more than one-third of all federal land and 700 million subsurface mineral acres ― all without Pendley having to go through a Senate confirmation process.” Pendley’s interim role lasts until Sept. 30 and could be extended. President Trump has yet to nominate a BLM director for Senate confirmation.
“We know BLM is moving forward with these plans and we have an acting director who has a direct conflict and has actively stated these monuments should be reduced and we should have development in these excluded areas,” Jayson O’Neill of the Western Values Project told the Salt Lake Tribune
The BLM released its Grand Staircase-Escalante use plan Aug. 23. The document lays out four courses of action, from least to most environmental impact. The BLM endorses the most impactful option. In July, the administration released a similar plan for nearly one million acres removed from Bears Ears National Monument. That document also favors fossil fuel extraction, livestock grazing, and motorized recreation, not to mention uranium mining.
Then-President Bill Clinton designated the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. The monument originally encompassed nearly 1.9 million acres, an area roughly the size of Delaware. Trump’s 2017 proclamation cut the monument nearly in half, to just over 1 million acres. The use plan allows drilling and mining on about 700,000 acres of the 900,000 acres removed from the monument. Extractive industries will not be allowed on land remaining within the monument.
Grazing will be expanded throughout current and former monument land. The plan allows more intense grazing than previously permitted, and opens more acreage to livestock, including along a delicate stretch of the Escalante River that remains within the monument.
Cedar Mesa and Valley of the Gods were excluded from Bears Ears National Monument in a controversial presidential proclamation in 2017. Photo by Bob Wick, BLM
The plan generally favors motorized recreation, opening two new routes to motorized users and designating a 2,528-acre “motorized play area” west of Escalante, where off-roaders will be free to hoon wherever they choose. Elsewhere in the monument, motorized use will be restricted to designated routes.
That plan “recklessly weakens protections even for the land that remains in the monument, failing to protect important sites from threats like illegal ATV use, looting, vandalism and damage from target shooting—which would be permitted within monument boundaries under this plan,” said Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona, chair of the House of Representatives Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples.
In July, we covered plans to log within the shrunken boundaries of Bears Ears, and now the lands removed from the monument have their extractive future laid out too. Bears Ears is the first national monument whose designation was spearheaded by Native American tribes. A coalition of five tribes petitioned then-President Barack Obama’s administration to protect the area, which includes tens of thousands of historic sites and cultural artifacts. Obama designated the monument at the end of 2016. A year later, Trump’s proclamation reduced it by 85 percent, from about 1.35 million acres to just over 200,000 acres.
The Trump administration’s plan allows for clearing forests for grazing or wildfire control by dragging a heavy chain between two tractors. The practice is destructive for landscapes and archeological sites, and is often used to prepare land for commercial cattle grazing, says Earthjustice attorney Heidi McIntosh. The environmental advocacy group is part of a coalition of tribes, environmental groups, and other stakeholders that sued the president immediately after he signed his proclamations dismantling Bears Ears and Grand Staircase. That case is pending before the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
If judge Tanya Chutkan rules in favor of the tribes and environmentalists, the monuments would be restored to their original boundaries and the administration would be required to develop new use plans. Last year Judge Chutkan rejected the Trump administration’s motion to move the case to more sympathetic court in Utah. She has not yet ruled on the administration’s motion to dismiss.
trump and the GOP has weaponized idiocy.
I am not clear on whether or not these extractive actions are on hold for now by the pending lawsuits — it is not explicitly stated in the article, and in fact it seems to say, yea there is a lawsuit, but meanwhile the administration is moving forward with these plans — does that mean only the planning (and sale of leases?? how could the sale of leases move forward when the lawsuit is pending and this land could be returned to monument status??) — some clarity would help and would provide either peace of mind or nightmares.
Nightmare. The administration is determined to plow ahead with these destructive management plans while the court decisions are still pending.
This is an abomination. Destroying a wild, beautiful place for someone’s profit.
I would also like to know how they can proceed with destroying this Monument before the legal battle is settled?
This president needs to be stopped before they start something that cannot be stopped.
He is nothing but a Greedy Money Hungry Dictator that dies exactly as he pleases even if it is illegal!
This is a complete nightmare! This administration is determined to destroy all our natural areas, clean water, and air quality. They need to be stopped!!
Until late in the Obama Administration these acres were not protected by monument status. And yet, no drilling occured. Please go visit these acres, if you can get to them, and see for yourself that the chance of destruction is miniscule. And, when you consider the Federal government owns over a quarter of the US land, a million or so acres is a drop in the bucket. Add to that the small footprint in that million acres of a drill field (go see one if you haven’t) and there is not much impact. On top of that, consider that the US citizens are not willing to cut back on their greed for energy and resource consumption, who is really to blame for needing more. Yes, it is companies that do this, and yes, they make money, but if they didn’t have a market of people wanting more, more, more then it would not be profitable for them to drill. All in all, if you haven’t seen this dry, barren land that had no roads fo as far as you can see, then you won’t understand that the politics and media are spewing emotional BS to control your mind.
Brandi
They were not protected BUT the admins were not ACTIVELY seeking to sell leases. Currently leases have been awarded (sold). Footprint may be small (not really) but impact is HUGE. Look at the North Slope. The supporting infrastructure and human impact is huge and not friendly to the planet nor other, less impactful users.
Re “drop in the bucket”. Our entire country was once thought of in that manner, the result? 90% forests are gone, endangered species, pollutted air and water, reduced access to public lands by the public that actually owns them.
Your points are all the arguements that have led to the exploitation of public lands for private profit, and permanent loss of the TRUE VALUE of those lands.