At the end of President Obama’s last term in office, he designated 1.3 million acres in southeastern Utah as the Bears Ears National Monument. This was a lame duck land grab that was publicized to the public through a tweet. Now, behind closed doors, the Bureau of Land Management is having more discussions about another potential national monument to the east of Bears Ears and to the west of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in Colorado and surrounding Hovenweep National Monument in southeastern Utah.
This monument hasn’t been heavily publicized, but its proposal demonstrates that monument supporters are intent on designating all public land as monuments. During our hearing for our challenge to the abuse of the Antiquities Act, a federal judge on the panel asked the government’s attorney multiple times if presidents could designate every square inch of undesignated federal land as a monument. The government’s attorney wouldn’t provide the simple answer of “no.” If this is true, then there is no discernible limit to the Antiquities Act. The name of this monument is “Lands Between,” which is an appropriate name. They’re just designating whatever multiple use lands lie between lands that have already been designated.
As is the case with most proposed monuments, the primary purpose of this monument isn’t to protect specific objects using boundaries that are the smallest necessary size. Instead, they’ve taken a landscape that includes some archaeological sites to justify a massive land grab of an entire landscape. The Bears Ears Partnership is the primary advocate promoting this monument, and they claim they want this monument to be a way to prevent State Trust Lands in Utah from being able to develop 50,000 acres that they own to develop oil and gas to pay for Utah’s education system.
This 350,000 acre national monument could be designated without the knowledge or support of the public much like the designation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. There are currently no maps, and not a lot of information publicized to give the public an idea of what is truly at stake. The Conservation Alliance and other environmental groups are calling on President Biden to utilize the Antiquities Act for last minute land grabs to lock up even more of our public lands. Please sign the petition letting your representatives know that not only you oppose this monument but ways they should also be opposing and preventing a lame duck land grab.
