President Donald Trump signed presidential proclamations on Dec. 4 to adjust the boundaries and reduce the size of two national monuments in Utah. The move impacts the Bears Ears National Monument designated by President Barack Obama on Dec. 26, 2016, and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument created by Bill Clinton on Sept. 18, 1996.
Bears Ears will be reduced by more than 1 million acres but will remain at just over 350,000 acres; Grand Staircase-Escalante will be reduced by almost half, going from 1.9 million acres to about 1 million acres.
The proclamations come after a review of national monuments was ordered by Trump in June, directing Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke to look at all designations over 100,000 acres since 1996 made using the authority of the Antiquities Act of 1906.
The move was welcomed by local communities and cattle producers who viewed the larger designations as somewhat of a federal land grab. Bruce Adams, who serves as chairman of the San Juan County Commission in Utah, where Bears Ears is located, told WLJ the move “ensures that those family cattle operations [with grazing permits with the boundaries] are going to be able to operate their business on public land without interference or overreach from the federal government.”
Adams is also a rancher, and although he doesn’t hold permits within the monument area, he understands the issues and explained, “Our contention was that the monument designation would be an overreach and it would be significantly more difficult; you would have to go through administrative rule to do maintenance and it would be impossible to do any range improvements—build any fence. There would be a strong push to reduce AUMs on BLM allotments, so to remove the monument designation removes all of those threats.”
Ethan Lane, executive director of the Public Lands Council and National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Federal Lands, told WLJ that the move is a reflection of this administration’s willingness to listen to some the concerns of communities in the West and the impact the designation would have on them.
Although some in the environmental community are crying “foul,” a presidential review of monuments is not something new. In fact, it has been used at least 18 times by presidents to reduce the size of 16 national monuments.
Lane explained that when looking at monument designations it is important to note the specific language of the Antiquities Act, saying “the smallest area compatible with the protection of objects.” He said the intention is to make sure artifacts are still protected, but that the government doesn’t designate too much land as a monument.
Both proclamations note that “A host of laws enacted after the Antiquities Act provide specific protection for archaeological, historic, cultural, paleontological, and plant and animal resources and give authority to the BLM [Bureau of Land Management] and USFS [U.S. Forest Service] to condition permitted activities on federal lands, whether within or outside a monument.”
The environmental community also followed through with their threats challenging the change in boundaries and filed a lawsuit on Dec. 4, soon after the proclamations were signed, claiming an abuse of power by Trump, and violation of the Antiquities Act. Groups involved in the lawsuit include: The Wilderness Society; the Grand Canyon Trust; the Sierra Club; Defenders of Wildlife; Great Old Broads for Wilderness; Center for Biological Diversity; WildEarth Guardians; and Western Watersheds Project. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and Natural Resources Defense Council are co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit and represented by in-house counsel.
While pointing out it is too early to speculate on an outcome of the lawsuit, Lane said, the lawsuit will test the scope of the president’s power. “The environmentalists insist that the president’s power to change the boundaries of a national monument is only a power to increase the size. Their assertion is that there is no power to reduce the size of a monument, only to increase it. I think that is probably a pretty tenuous argument to make and so does the White House and the Department of Interior. It will be interesting to see it tested in court.” — Rae Price, WLJ editor
