BY ROBINSON MEYER
When historians go searching for the encapsulating symbol of President Obama’s environmental legacy—and all the idealism and ire that accompanied it—they need look no further than two buttes rising from the desert in southeastern Utah.
On Wednesday, with a stroke of his pen, Obama created the Bears Ears National Monument. The monument grants federal protection to the twin geological formations that rise above the horizon, which are called “Bears Ears” in English and nearly every local Native language. It also protects the more than 2,000 square miles of desert and shrub that surround them—a land of hidden canyons, soaring peaks, and starry, silent nights.