Shrinking of National Monuments at Odds with Desires of Utahns, Western Voters

By Claire Sallee

This is why we can’t have nice things. It’s a saying I have been using way too much after Trump was reelected for a second term. In his most recent escapade of disrupting protected and valued public lands, he has signed executive orders to virtually eliminate Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. Before giving too much attention to President Trump’s irrational decision, I would like to look at the Monuments’ history and why they are so important. 

Bears Ears National Monument looks just like its name. The buttes rise above the Earth and give any onlooker a sweet sight. The Diné call the figures Shash Jáa. They grace the horizon in every direction and are home to ancient stories, ceremonial sites, rock art, and more. On December 28, 2016, President Obama designated Bears Ears National Monument in San Juan County. This establishment created a historic management partnership among two federal agencies and five Tribal Nations. 

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is made up of a very unique area of canyons, arches, plateaus, and cliffs. It partly gets its name from the Escalante River, which flows from Boulder Mountain to the Colorado River. The Monument also gets its name from the way the bench-like features rise among the cliffs, almost like steps progressively rising in elevation from south to north. In 1996, President Clinton designated the landscape as a National Monument. Grand Staircase-Escalante contains significant biodiversity, paleontological resources, and Indigenous cultural resources. 

Within a year of Bears Ears being designated, President Trump ordered the largest rollback of National Monument protections in U.S. history, gutting Bears Ears by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by nearly half. Advocates for the West serves as legal counsel to Conservation Lands Foundation, and in that capacity helped to block Trump’s reductions from becoming permanent. 

Trump’s most recent decision follows previous environmental terrorizing that the president has put into motion. When you live in a representative democracy, you would assume that the wishes and desires of a state’s inhabitants would be listened to and followed. But that’s not what’s happening here. All throughout Utah, residents have shown support for keeping these monuments protected. Trump has outright ignored their pleas, and their local representatives have turned a blind eye to their constituents’ wishes. In fact, multiple polls have shown most Utahns and western voters favored keeping the Monuments at the size they were prior to Trump’s recent decision to drastically shrink them. Not only have Utah communities raised concerns, but Tribal Nations with cultural connections to these spaces are raising flags and being ignored. This is not the kind of federal representation that we can rely on to keep these monuments, or any other natural treasures, safe. 

Advocates of the West will work alongside our partners to protect the values these communities hold for special places such as Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Indigenous perspectives, recreation and access,  and wildlife and their habitats deserve a voice. In this time of unprecedented threats to special places, Advocates for the West is working to ensure that cherished public lands remain protected. 

(Claire Sallee is a Boise State University Andrus Scholar Summer Intern at Advocates for the West.)