by Tim Peterson, Utah Wildlands Director
The Grand Canyon Trust is profoundly disappointed in today’s proclamations. The Antiquities Act of 1906 grants presidents the power to create monuments, but not to undo or shrink them. That authority rests exclusively with Congress. President Trump’s attempts to gut our national monuments are a gross overreach of executive power, and they cannot stand.
President Trump has said about bronze confederate monuments that he’s “sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.” But his actions to eviscerate national monuments do more than that — he’s trying to tear apart not just our history, but the pre-history of our great country as well.
The Grand Canyon Trust has a 20-year history of working to protect Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Trust members and volunteers have contributed thousands of hours of stewardship and advocacy to leave the monument better than we found it. President Trump’s actions are a rejection of this service — the kind of service we need more of in our monuments — and a strong indicator that he serves narrow special interests at the expense of public lands. Make no mistake — President Trump is trading protection of dinosaur fossils for the pipe dream of mining uneconomic coal at Grand Staircase. Twenty-one new species of dinosaur have been discovered since the creation of the monument where the coal deposits are found.
Bears Ears National Monument is more than just a way to protect cultural resources, fossils, geology, and history. It represents an opportunity to learn from the five tribes that joined together to protect Bears Ears — Navajo, Hopi, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Zuni — about their profoundly sacred relationship with the landscape. We believe Trump’s attack on Bears Ears is unjust and unlawful.
The Grand Canyon Trust will file a lawsuit challenging this unacceptable affront to our core values, our mission, and the law of the land. We stand behind the tribes that worked so hard to protect Bears Ears, and we’ll continue to advocate for the interests of national monument-loving Americans in the long legal battle ahead.
Today’s attack on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase comes after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s deeply flawed and opaque monuments review process conducted over the course of just a few short months. In many cases, the efforts to protect these places through monument designation took years and even decades.
Zinke delivered his final recommendations to the White House on August 24, 2017 and in the culminating example of the concealment that stained the entire process, kept his recommendations secret. The draft recommendations were leaked in September, but he has yet to make his final recommendations public.
During his review, Zinke “pardoned” several of the 27 monuments on the hit list. Speaking on some of the monuments he recommended be left alone, Zinke said of Canyons of the Ancients, “The history at this site spans thousands of years, and the federal protection of these objects and history will help us preserve this site for a thousand more years.” He said of Craters of the Moon, “As a former geologist, I realize [this monument] is a living timeline of the geologic history of our land.” And he said that Grand Canyon-Parashant represents “the scientific history of our earth while containing thousands of years of human relics and fossils.”
Grand Staircase and Bears Ears national monuments contain all these qualities and more. They are more than a stunning record of thousands of years of human history, magnificent scenery, geology, and a treasure trove of fossils and dinosaur bones. They are our shared natural and cultural heritage. Secretary Zinke’s recommendations and President Trump’s actions are nothing more than an attempt to tear down the legacy of their predecessors at the expense of future generations.
Americans want to see our parks and monuments strengthened for future generations, not eviscerated for short-term gain by fossil fuel and uranium mining interests. 99.2 percent of those who commented during the national monuments review said so.
You may have heard from Trump administration officials that the areas whose protections within national monuments were gutted today are already protected. While some areas are Bureau of Land Management Wilderness Study Areas, these kinds of designations were never intended to be permanent like national monuments are. Many places in Bears Ears, including hundreds of thousands of acres of national forest that were cut, have no such protections, and are loaded with irreplaceable cultural resources that now are vulnerable to looting, energy development, and other projects that destroy cultural sites.
In order to permanently protect public lands, either Congress or a president must act to convert temporary protections to permanent protection like national monuments or wilderness. But the Utah congressional delegation has proven itself virtually incapable of writing and passing legislation that actually protects public lands. Utah still has less designated wilderness than any other Western state. When the Trump administration tries to sell you the idea that these places are still protected, don’t buy it. President Trump has removed protections for Utah’s oldest rock art site near Bluff, for the northernmost great house village site from the Chaco era in Utah, and for countless other important cultural sites.
We know you care about Bears Ears and Grand Staircase and this news is still fresh and raw. We’ll let you know in the coming weeks how you can help.
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