Trump Shrinks Bears Ears National Monument By 85%, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Indigenous Sacred Land Was Insufficiently Available For Uranium Mining

The Filing

SALT LAKE CITY. President Donald Trump on Monday signed proclamations slicing Bears Ears National Monument by 1.1 million acres, or roughly 85 percent, and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by approximately half, executing what the Interior Department described as the largest reduction of federal land protections in American history.

The shrinkages, totaling nearly 2 million acres newly opened to potential mining, drilling, and grazing, resolve what the administration identified as a long-standing imbalance in Utah, in which large quantities of public land had remained both publicly held and protected from extraction for years on end.

"Public lands will once again be for public use," Trump declared from the Utah State Capitol, in language the administration subsequently clarified to mean available for use by the public's mining, drilling, and grazing concessionaires.

The reductions track closely with maps previously submitted to the Interior Department by lobbyists for Utah's uranium industry, an outcome senior officials attributed to a coincidence informed by economics, geology, and lobbying. The five tribal nations that had jointly proposed Bears Ears, the Hopi, Navajo, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni, were not consulted in advance, a decision the administration attributed to scheduling.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke praised the move as a restoration of local control, by which he meant control by parties other than the local tribes who had originally sought the designation. Lawsuits from the tribes and conservation groups were filed within hours, on the legal theory that the Antiquities Act permits presidents to create monuments but not to dismantle them.

At press time, Energy Fuels Resources, a uranium mining company that had hired lobbyists to redraw the boundaries, was reviewing the new map to confirm that its preferred deposits were, by remarkable happenstance, now situated outside federal protection.

Who Benefits

§Donald Trump, who delivered a signature deliverable to Western Republican donors and demonstrated to his base that protections on public lands could be undone by executive proclamation alone.
§Trump Organization, which gained no direct interest in the parcels but benefited from goodwill across the Western extractive industries the company has long cultivated.
§Energy Fuels Resources, the uranium mining company whose lobbyists submitted boundary recommendations to the Interior Department that closely matched the final excisions, including in the vicinity of its Daneros uranium mine.
§Utah Republican delegation, particularly Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Rob Bishop, who had spent years arguing that Bears Ears was both too large and federally controlled.
§Oil, gas, and coal interests, which gained access to leasable parcels inside the previously protected boundaries.
§Ranching interests, granted expanded grazing access on formerly off-limits acreage.
§Garfield and Kane County commissioners, who had lobbied for the reduction of Grand Staircase-Escalante and gained local political wins.
§Future executives, who inherited a fresh precedent that the Antiquities Act could be wielded in reverse, a tool likely to be reached for again.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment