Will President-elect Biden restore the original boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante (above at Metate Arch) and Bears Ears national monuments?/BLM
Among the speculated items on President-elect Joe Biden's to-do list that is expected to get quick action is an executive order rescinding President Trump's dismantling of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, action that possibly could spur even more legal battles over these unique landscapes.
"His campaign has been clear that restoring the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments is a top priority and we're very grateful for that," said Steve Bloch, the legal director for Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "That's our expectation, that the Biden administration will restore the monuments to their original if not expanded glory. The monuments suffered under the Trump administration, and we're looking forward to having the protections that come along with monument status restored and the Interior Department managing them like the national treasures that they are."
Bears Ears, a 1.35-million-acre rugged redrock landscape rich in Native American history and lore, was declared a national monument by President Barack Obama in December 2016. The crooked boundary of the monument touched Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Canyonlands National Park, and Natural Bridges National Monument.
Grand Staircase, meanwhile, was established by President Bill Clinton in September 1996 when he set aside 1.9 million acres in southern Utah. The monument is extremely rich in paleontological resources, with nearly 150 scientists later saying the monument “hosts one of the highest concentrations of dinosaur fossils in the world,” and that only 6 percent has been surveyed, and that “the potential for future discovery is tremendous.”
In 2017 Trump tossed aside the actions Clinton and Obama took under The Antiquities Act and cut Grand Staircase by a bit more than 1 million acres and broke it into three monuments known as Grand Staircase, Escalante Canyons, and Kaiparowits. Bears Ears National Monument shrank to a bit more than 201,000 acres in the Indian Creek and Shash Jáa units from its original size of 1.3 million acres.
The reduction of the two national monuments represents the largest reduction of any protected area in the United States, according to a study that came out earlier this fall.
Citadel Ruins in Bears Ears National Monument/BLM file
But on the very day that Trump stood on the steps of Utah's Capitol in Salt Lake City and announced the breakup of those monuments, groups announced their intent to challenge his authority.
The case still resides in a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C. Whether Biden signs an executive order on his first day in office or soon thereafter that reverses Trump's moves and spurs additional litigation remains to be seen.
Bloch wasn't sure exactly how the Biden administration might go about reversing Trump's severing of the monuments.
"I think there are a variety of paths in front of the administration. It's hard to speculate what they're going to do," he said Tuesday during a phone call. "One thing is clear, the Antiquities Act gives the president the authority to establish national monuments, the same way that Clinton and Obama established the original Grand Staircase and Bears Ears. So that's surely one of the options on the table, is to establish those monuments.
"And it's hard to predict and I'm not really in a good spot to look into a crystal ball to what option they're going to find the most appealing," added Bloch.
The back-and-forth over protection for these areas represents just the latest fray over public lands in Utah, and elsewhere in the West, that are viewed either as natural resource-rich and cultural landscapes to be protected or wastelands to be pilfered for what might lie beneath the surface.
"The original Bears Ears and Grand Staircase National Monuments represented an opportunity to restore damaged landscapes, enforce the preservation of antiquities, and educate visitors about the meaning of these lands to science, history, and present-day cultures," writes Salt Lake City historian Frederick Swanson in his new book, Wonders of Sand and Stone, A History of Utah's National Parks and Monuments. "The diminished monuments of today continue the past approach of fragmented and spotty protection of important public resources.
"A different approach would examine the canyon country region on a broad scale, looking for common purposes that might help to heal old divisions," Swanson continues. "This would require all parties to take a hard look at how we have historically treated the land and its longtime inhabitants, and then chart new directions that encompass the entire range of values we seek in our public lands. Such a process, though largely untried, offers perhaps the best hope that Utah's national parks and monuments will remain as living examples of the magnificence of Earth's creation."
Whether Utahns of differing opinions on these landscapes can sit down at a table and come to some satisfactory terms remains to be seen. At the same time, noted Bloch, "the establishment of national monuments was supposed to be a permanent and durable protection for the landscape. It's, like so many things, Trump interrupted that, and so I'm not sure I agree with that framing of the ping-ponging" of legal battles.
"As to the larger issue, you would like to think that we could get to that point (of finding common purposes with public lands in Utah), but I'm frankly pessimistic about it. But maybe I shouldn't be."
Comments
To be clear, the U.S. Constitution created a Republic, not a pure democracy. These are different things. This is why we have things such as an electoral college.
For those interested in the subject, may I recommend these relatively succent and enjoyable reads:
"The Summer of 1787"
"The Quartet"
Hump ---
Mentioning Buck's history of failed electoral hopes will most likely not elicit a warm cuddly response. The two books recommended by Loui may well help you, me, or others to understand the origins of the nation and constitution. It will indeed take a complete and ongoing education in American history to reflect on those origns and look now on where we have ended up. Be wary, though of "originalists", who would absolutely freeze time. Personally, I like living in a nation founded on those early words and thoughts, but I continue to also like penicillin and e-mail.
Frankly I'm surprised that Trumps reductions havent already been tossed.
a little background first . the Antiquities Act only mentions conservation of areas. it doesnt say, explicitly, that the presdent can shrink monuments. Presidents have asked Congress several times to modify the law to allow that, as was the case for national forests in the Forest Reserves Act of 1891, which allowed for not only the creation of forest reseves, but for the president to shrink or abolish them as well. the Antquities Act has no such provision. Congress has refused to change the law, and the only modification power that has received sanction by the courts is expansion, in cases such as Cappaert v Us (1976) and US v California (1978).
Presidents have shrunk monuments, starting in 1910, but the vast majority of reductions came under the auspices of a 1915 Supreme Court case called Midwest Oil, wich held the president had implied powers when it came to federal lands, including monuments. the thinking was, that the president could tweak monuments, if the monument contains state lands or private lands, or lands not considered park or monument worthy, the president could slice those lands out. from 1910-64 there were 2 significant reductions of monuments- in 1915 Wilson sliced the 640000 acre Mount Olympus national monument in Washington almost in half, carving out some 300000 acres. Wilsons justification was the timber in the forests was needed for ship building , as World War I was raging at the time. that action was not challenged in court and Congress did not act to codify the move into law. Congress would eventually add the lands back in in 1938 in upgrading Mount Olympus to a national park, the park today covers 922000 acres.
the other reduction was FDR cutting 70000 acres out of the second Grand Canyon national monument in 1940( yes there have been 2 monuments called Grand Canyon), reducing the monument from 270000 acres to 200000 acres. the monument was eventually added into the park in 1975, increasing the park to its current 1.2M acre size. Other reductions consisted of a few hundred to a few thousand acres, and were balanced, and then some, by expansions.
in 1976 Congress passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which eliminated scored of old conservation laws and removed lots of conservation authorities from the president- with one singular, notable exception. Congress left the Antiquities Act alone, at President Ford's insistence. Ford had threatened a veto if the law passed as orginally written, which would have repealed the Antiquities Act too. FLPMA also repealed the 1915 Midwest Oil decision, eliminating all implied presidential powers and leaving the president with only explicitly granted powers. the Supreme Court ruled in June 1976 in Cappaert v Us that the Antiquities Act permitted expansions, and its likely FLPMA was amended to take the high courts ruling into account as it didnt pass until later that summer . Section 204j of FLPMA is important, as it precludes the Interior secretary from making any changes to existing monuments. ANY changes, including reductions. the Interior secretary makes monument recommendations to the presiddent, in regards to number of monuments, and their size. by barring recommending reductuons, it ties the presidents hands as well.
Until Zinke, no Interior secretary, even James Watt, had recommended shrinking of monuments since FLPMA, most likey because of the legal consesus that Congresss had reserved that authority for itself. Bush 43 had inquired about shrinking some of Clinton's monuments upon taking office in 2001, but was explicitly told by his AG Gale Norton that he lacked any authority to shrink monuments. Bush left the Clinton monuments alone and ended up creating 6 mouments, including the first in Alaska since ANILCA in 1980, and 4 huge marine monuments in the Pacific.
Zinke and Trump ignored the law, and precedent. Grand staircase escalane was upheld by the courts as valid in 2004 in a case called Utah Association of counties v Bush. Congress had tweaked the monuments borders in 1998, with the effect of adding some 200000 acres to the monument , which originally covered 1.7M acres when desgnated in 1996. Obamas designation of Bears Bars covers 1.35M acres , and trump erased the monument in everything but name. the combined 2M acres cut out dwarfs the combined reductions of all previous presidents several times over. Zinke violated FLPMA by recommending the reductions, and Trump violated the Arbitrary and Capricious standard by shrinking them. in other words the president cant change monuments on a whim, any changes have to protect the areas and objects that were the grounds for the original monument desgnation, such as Indian ruins, artifacts, natural formations, wildlife etc. By cutting so much out of both monuments, Trump made protecting them impossible.
I would disagree with your statement that "most of the people who live nearby" do not want the land as National Monuments. Studies have show time and again that recreation provides more income, jobs, and long-term economic security than extractive resources do. There are only so many areas that left that provide the kinds of great natural beauty and pristine environments that we all need. Destroying these areas for short-term gain benefits only a small, select few.
From republic-vs-democracy-4169936 Recommended read.
The following statement is often used to define the United States' system of government: "The United States is a republic, not a democracy." This statement suggests that the concepts and characteristics of republics and democracies can never coexist in a single form of government. However, this is rarely the case. As in the United States, most republics function as blended "representational democracies" featuring a democracy's political powers of the majority tempered by a republic's system of checks and balances enforced by a constitution that protects the minority from the majority.
To say that the United States is strictly a democracy suggests that the minority is completely unprotected from the will of the majority, which is not correct.
Rick,
I agree. We don't live in the 1780's anymore. We don't even live in the 1980's anymore. I have many issues with the Constitution, the biggest being that it is so hard to amend and thus be adapted to the fast changing world in which we live, and, as a consequence, have left fundamental decisions about how we live, both as one and as many, up to nine folks in black robes.
"This is why we have things such as an electoral college." Loui, I'm not sure this is entirely correct. My understanding is that we have an electorial college because: 1) The framers couldn't agree on how the the President should be chosen. Some - Madison being one - wanted the President elected by vote of the people. Others - I believe Hamilton was one this side - argued that the President should be chosen by the Senate. 2) The framers (educated rich white guys) did not want to give too much power to the 'rabble,' that is, we the people. That's why Senators were chosen by the State Legislatures (mostly educated rich white guys at the time) until the 17th Amendment. Interestingly, I read somewhere that the reason Representatives have two year terms was to keep the 'rabble' so busy getting re-elected that they wouldn't have the time and energy to interfer with actually running the Federal Government. I think one way (of many) to think about American history is as a long struggle to shift power from the educated rich white guys to the rabble.