It is a sprawling land of seemingly endless vistas and soaring plateaus. The red canyon is sprinkled with ancient rock art and historic Aboriginal settlements. Usually, nonconfrontational paleontologists are so shocked by these fossils that they sue to try to protect the land.
Two Democratic presidents moved to preserve this rugged terrain by creating a pair of national monuments in southern Utah – Bears ears and Grand Staircase- Escalante.
President Trump Radical reduction limit of the two monuments, then their status turned back when President Biden took office and essentially restored the protection of native lands.
Another reversal seems certain if Trump takes the White House. Experts say this year’s election also brings attention to a broader question: What will happen to the millions of acres of land concentrated in the West and owned by the US government?
Trump has expressed a desire to open up more land to oil drilling, mining and logging. And a Supreme Court heavily influenced by Trump-appointed judges has signaled it wants to check the president’s power to create national monuments.
Trump appointees Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch signaled this year that they wanted to review President Obama’s expansion of Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument on the Oregon-California state line. And in 2021, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. declared skepticism about Obama’s other monument designation – from an underwater reservoir larger than Yellowstone National Park off the coast of New England. `
“Which is unlike the other: (a) a monument, (b) ancient (defined as “an ancient relic or monument”) or (c) 5,000 square miles of land under the sea?” Roberts wrote in a statement, although the court declined to take the case.
And a controversial plan drawn up by conservatives as a blueprint for the next Republican administration would put Trump even further ahead if elected: repeal the Antiquities Act of 1906, the law that allows the president of both parties to create monuments of almost 160 archaeological sites, historical landmarks and scientific locations or other historical significance.
Project 2025 said the monument law has been overused and public land should remain open for a wide range of Ephesus – including oil drilling, coal mining and recreation. That goes with Trump’s promise, if he wins a second term, to “drill, baby, drill.”
Although Trump has tried to get rid of Project 2025, the author of the Department of the Interior, lawyer William Perry Pendleyhas served in the first Trump administration, as the top official in the Bureau of Land Management.
In Project 2025, Pendley accused the Biden administration of “implementing an extensive regulatory regime,” beyond what Congress envisioned, and effectively prohibiting nearly all “productive economic use” of federal lands managed by the Department of the Interior.
Environmental and tribal organizations have expressed the opposite opinion, saying that Trump is the one who made the largest reduction in the lands protected by the monument in history and that he will give more access to companies to public lands in his second term.
“Project 2025 is an example of what it would look like to sell America’s natural resources and public lands to corporations that don’t care about the environment, the climate, taxpayers, or wildlife,” wrote the Center for Western Priorities, a nonprofit that has resisted the push to transfer federal lands to state and private ownership.
Other issues – such as the economy, immigration, abortion and fair elections – have been high on the agenda during the presidential campaign, while the environment, climate change and public land priorities have usually taken a back seat.
This may be because most of the land owned by the US government is located in Western states, most of which (with the exception of Arizona and Nevada) will not be closely decided in presidential races.
The federal government owns less than 5% of the land east of the Mississippi River, but nearly half of the acreage in 11 Western states in the Lower 48, controlled mostly by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service.
Pilot Rock rises above the clouds in Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument near Lincoln, Ore.
(Jeff Barnard/Associated Press)
Conservatives in many of those states have campaigned for decades to try to wrest some of these properties from the federal government, saying decisions about their use should be closer to home.
Environmentalists have argued that federal officials are in the best position to protect the land that all Americans value, not just those in certain states or communities.
Last week’s vice-presidential debate offered a rare moment in the 2024 campaign where the candidates squared off a very different view of public land jump onto the national stage.
Asked about the crisis in affordable housing, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance stated that “a lot of federal land … is not being used for anything,” and “could be a place where we build a lot of housing.”
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz disagreed. He said open space remains the way it is “for a reason” and the state needs a better solution than saying, “Let’s take this federal land and let’s sell it.”
Republicans in Utah celebrated in 2017 when Trump returned the borders of sprawling Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, which are located about 100 miles apart in the southern part of the state. The President then cut Bears Ears by about 85%, down to 201,876 acres. He cut the second pillar from 1.9 million hectares to more than 1 million hectares.
Trump accused Democratic Presidents Obama and Clinton of setting aside too much land to protect archeology and other resources that are the object of monument designations.
“Some people think that Utah’s natural resources should be controlled by some far-flung bureaucrat in Washington,” Trump said. “And guess what? They are wrong.”
Some Utahns welcomed the new Republican designation and jobs that will come with looser protections. But about 3,000 protesters, including tribal members, protested the day of Trump’s action. He said monument status helps protect cultural resources, including centuries-old petroglyphs and cave dwellings.
The transition between Democratic and Republican administrations has meant whipsawing between philosophies — with the Trump-era management plan for the Utah monument remaining in place while the Biden administration’s management plan is in a difficult approval process.
A nonprofit that helps oversee conservation and programs at Grand Staircase-Escalante said it has been challenging to keep up with the flood of new visitors that have come with the Trump administration’s less restrictive policies. Trump’s management plan allows, for example, to double the size of the group that can visit the monument, to 25.
“It doesn’t sound like a lot, but a group of 25 people leaves a lot more human waste and other waste than a group of 12,” Jackie Grant, executive director of Grand Staircase-Escalante Partners, said in an email. . “Human waste takes more than a year to break down in the desert environment of the Great Stairs-Escalante National Monument. Now imagine the impact of 500,000 to a million people defecating in a fairly limited area of desert in one year.
Group size limits are expected to be reduced under the Biden administration’s management plan, which is nearing completion.
Trump’s plan also opens more roads for use by all-terrain vehicles. The opening of the V-Road in the Escalante Canyons section of the monument has left the area – in consideration for higher protection as a wilderness area – damaged by vandalism, garbage and other human waste.
The damage comes amid little “economic expansion by means of natural resource extraction” that state officials have promised, Grant said.
William Perry Pendley, who served as director of the US Bureau of Land Management under President Trump, wrote a section of Project 2025 that called for the reduction of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument.
(Associated Press)
Pendley, a former Trump BLM official, has been fighting for more state and local control of public lands since he served in the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan. He wrote “Sagebrush Rebel,” a book about Reagan’s fight against what he saw as excessive federal control of Western lands.
The Pendley Project 2025 plan calls for the reduction of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, saying that the area should be governed by the historic agreement that preceded the monument. This would allow for more timber harvesting on BLM lands, creating good-paying jobs and reducing fuel for future wildfires, Pendley said.
At A Wyoming-raised attorney said that many laws were implemented after the Antiquities Act – to protect endangered species, and wild and beautiful rivers, for example – create adequate protection for the outdoors.
Advocates for Cascade-Siskiyou and other monuments say the president is using his monument-making power wisely. He points to the Grand Canyon in Arizona and Denali in Alaska as among the monuments that make up his beloved national parks.
Dave Willis, a horse packer who lives on monument land in Oregon, has been fighting to create and preserve the Cascade-Siskiyou monument for decades. The goal of Trump allies to open the property to timber harvesting is just part of a “broken earth policy on all public lands,” he said.
“America really cares about public lands,” Willis said. “And if someone makes a threat, they will never lie. Trying to destroy public land will make you go down in history.
