I was thinking last week that the next post might be of cute prairie dogs and burrowing owls. Those will need to get back in their burrows. Nearly every day this administration enrages and exhausts. I’m a bit surprised it took them until this week to take this disgusting action they tried nine years ago and stated as a goal in Project 2025—remove protections of nearly 3 million acres of glorious public lands and open them for mineral extraction and loosened recreation. And they surpassed these expected ruinations by taking power away from the native peoples that were overseeing and guiding the protections of these lands.
Where will this end? — Buckskin Gulch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah
We just hiked the trail through this amazing landscape in January, and I wrote about it here: Wire Pass to Buckskin Gulch This area within Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was protected by President Bill Clinton by Executive Order under the Antiquities Act in 1996. In 2017, for the first time, a president claimed he had authority under the Antiquities Act to dismantle a National Monument, and opened nearly all of Grand Staircase-Escalante NM to mining and grazing interests. Lawsuits stalled most actions until President Biden issued a new Executive Order restoring the boundaries and protections. Again, Trump seeks to take away 90% of two national monuments.
In his newest Executive Order signed this week, Trump denigrated President Biden’s order saying it was “flawed” because it stated a “purported need to protect items . . . such as ‘vast and austere landscapes,’ ‘sedimentary rock layers,’ and ‘bold plateaus and multihued cliffs.’ . . . These generic features . . . do not become ‘landmarks,’ ‘structures,’ or ‘objects of historic or scientific interest’ worthy of protection under the Antiquities Act simply because they are scenic.” Trump says these items “are not unique to the Monument, and their relative commonness suggests that the specific instances of such objects found within the Monument are not of particular historic or scientific interest. Examples of these relatively common objects include cultural, paleontological, and geological resources within the Monument that are found throughout the Four Corners region.”
Relative Commonness - Valley of the Gods, Bears Ears National Monument, Utah
In 2017, my old website got infected with many viruses and I needed to shut it down and create this one. One of my lasts posts on the old site was about Trump’s acts to destroy Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. My first post on this site in June 2017 regarded a petition fighting the Bears Ears reduction.
I would guess if I did an inventory of places that I’ve posted about on this blog, Bears Ears National Monument may well lead the list. Its remoteness and beauty have captured me. And I agree with the five nations — the Hopi, Navajo, Ute, Ute Mountain and Zuni — who petitioned President Obama to create Bears Ears, that it is holy land. In his Executive Order to eliminate most of Bears Ears, Trump defecates on these beliefs: “The relative commonness of these cultural resources with the broader area suggests that the specific instances of such objects found within the Monument are not of particular historic or scientific interest. For instance, lithic scatters, projectile points, prehistoric campsites, petroglyphs, and pictographs are found across the American West and are not unique to the Bears Ears region. Accordingly, a monument reservation was neither necessary nor appropriate to protect these items.”
President Obama’s order creating the National Monument established the Bears Ears Commission with representative of the Five Nations to help govern the Monument. This week’s order dissolved the Commission, and created an advisory committee. That committee will have one representative from each of the nations, six representatives appointed by the Utah Governor, who stood next to Trump as he signed this Executive Order, and county and city representatives. One of the governor’s appointees is to be an “off-highway vehicle user” and the order immediately allows motorized use on any trails on which they were banned after President Obama’s order.
Relative Commonness — Butler Wash Ancestral Puebloan site
No map was attached to the order showing exactly what areas remain protected, even though the order said there would be. Some areas near Butler Wash are to still be protected, but it is not clear whether the above structure or hundreds of similar sites will be within the new restricted boundaries. Of course, mining and drilling near such fragile structures creates an enormous risk of damage. But it is clear what the higher priority is:
The land “should be put to a higher-priority use. The Bears Ears region contains several resources that are vital to energy and resource independence and, in turn, critical to national security. These resources — which include critical minerals such as silver, copper, molybdenum, lead, uranium, vanadium, and zinc — create jobs, fuel prosperity, and are essential to important sectors of the economy of the United States, including defense, manufacturing, and transportation.”
Procession panel, Bears Ears National Monument
The Native Nations will soon file suit to reverse Trump’s orders. Likely a coalition of conservation groups such as the National Parks Conservation Association, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Wilderness Society, Sierra Club and similar organizations will join together in legal actions to stop this destruction. We will support them. A detailed analysis of the Executive Orders was written by Jonathon Thompson.