The fate of the 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument was called into question almost as soon as it was created by former President Barack Obama in December 2016. Donald Trump had already won the election, and his supporters pushed him to reverse Obama’s decision, a call Trump heeded less than a year later.
This back-and-forth created difficulties for the Bureau of Land Management, which — along with the U.S. Forest Service — oversees lands in Bears Ears. The agency ordered a batch of new signs that were designed to be posted along the monument’s boundaries in early 2017, but the exact boundaries have never been a fully settled question.
President Joe Biden’s decision Friday to restore the Obama-era boundaries isn’t likely to result in any immediate changes on the ground in either Bears Ears or Grand Staircase-Escalante...