It’s time for President Biden to restore our national monuments
Protecting Bears Ears and Grand Staircase is enormously popular, even in Utah
The last four years proved incredibly damaging for our parks and public lands, with the Trump administration stripping conservation protections and speeding new drilling and mining projects. Perhaps the most illustrative example of this destructive agenda was President Trump’s decision to dramatically shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah, opening iconic and sacred landscapes to new mining and development. Now, President Biden has the opportunity to right these wrongs by restoring protections for these national monuments. Not only is it the right thing to do, the American public, including Utahns, strongly support doing so.
Shortly after taking office, President Biden ordered the Interior Department to review the 2017 executive orders eviscerating Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, which he has slammed as “assaults on America’s national treasures.” Biden’s order directed the department to deliver its findings and recommendations within 60-days, essentially by the end of March.
As a part of this review, the Biden administration is reaching out to Tribal nations, many of which consider these landscapes sacred and specifically asked for the creation of Bears Ears National Monument. Patrick Gonzales-Rogers, the executive director of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition welcomed the opportunity for substantive input, saying the Trump administration’s “attempts at consultation seemed transactional and optical at best.” Tribal nations and monument supporters will have an ally in Congresswoman Deb Haaland, who will likely be confirmed as the next Interior Secretary, making her the first Native American to lead the department.
Polling and data analysis shows that shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments was wildly unpopular, and restoring protections to these landscapes has broad public support. An analysis of more than 2.5 million public comments submitted to the Trump Interior Department showed that 98% of respondents opposed reducing or eliminating national monuments. Further, 88% of self-identified Utahns who submitted comments supported maintaining Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante as is. Just this month, polling released by Colorado College’s State of the Rockies project showed that 77% of voters in eight Mountain West states support restoring protections for national monuments, including 74% of voters in Utah.
These national monuments not only conserve iconic landscapes, they benefit the economies of local communities. In 2017, the head of the Boulder and Escalante Chamber of Commerce wrote, “our local tourism industry in Escalante has grown and is thriving,” noting that new lodging facilities have opened, new home construction was at an all-time high, and attributing “the majority of our success to the attraction of the nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.”
In 2020, the San Juan County Commission, representing the Utah county encompassing Bears Ears National Monument, passed a resolution asking President Biden to restore protections for the monument. Neighboring Grand County passed a similar resolution in support of the monument, as did the city council for Moab, Utah, which has seen its outdoor recreation economy boom in recent years.
In its first month, the Biden administration has embraced a bold conservation agenda, setting a goal of protecting 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030, moving to reform our broken and rigged system for oil drilling on public lands, and taking steps to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. President Biden should add to this legacy by restoring protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments — a move supported by the American public, Utahns, and local communities.
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