The expanses of wind-swept badlands, narrow slot canyons and towering rock formations are sacred to several Native American nations and prized by scientists and outdoor enthusiasts. Bears Ears contains tens of thousands of cultural artifacts and rare rock art. In the rock layers of Grand Staircase, researchers have unearthed 75 million-year-old dinosaur fossils.
But the lands also harbor significant amounts of oil, gas and coal the administration hopes to develop, as well as grazing land valued by local ranchers. Under the plan that went into effect Thursday, those areas are open to new mining claims and other kinds of development.
Officials from the Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service who manage the lands have said the new plans balance the region’s economic interests against the need to safeguard natural and cultural wonders. Casey Hammond, the Interior Department’s acting assistant secretary for land and minerals management, noted that the areas excluded from monuments are still protected by federal environmental laws.
“We are advancing our goal to restore trust and be a good neighbor,” Hammond said Thursday.
The decision to overhaul what activities are permitted on large swaths of federal land in southern Utah comes as the Bureau of Land Management is eyeing much bigger changes to how it manages the 245 million acres of public land and the minerals buried underneath them.
In a letter obtained last month by The Washington Post, the BLM’s top Alaska official informed tribes that the agency is considering revamping how it writes its resource management plans to make it easier to log and extract energy from lands it oversees. The proposal aims to streamline environmental reviews, Chad Padgett wrote, to save taxpayer money and be more responsive to local needs.
The 1906 Antiquities Act empowers a president to protect public lands of archaeological significance. President Bill Clinton first designated Grand Staircase-Escalante a national monument in 1996. President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears a national monument 20 years later.
Since the Interior Department redrew the monuments’ boundaries, Grand Staircase is half its former size and Bears Ears has shrunk by 85 percent.
A coalition of groups sued the administration immediately after President Trump announced the new boundaries. They argue that the act does not give a president the authority to revoke their predecessors’ national monument designations.
The Justice Department last year sought to have the two lawsuits dismissed, but a federal judge denied the motions.
Several plaintiffs roundly criticized the administration for moving forward with management plans while the cases were still in court. But Hammond said Thursday that the Interior Department would not delay its decision to match a slow-moving legal process.
“If we stopped and waited for every piece of litigation to be resolved, we would never be able to do much of anything around here,” he said.
In developing the plan for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, Hammond said, the BLM consulted with Native American tribes and considered thousands of public comments. The changes to the monuments have also won praise from officials in Utah, including Sens. Mitt Romney (R) and Mike Lee (R) and Gov. Gary R. Herbert (R).
“Monuments should be as small as possible to protect artifacts and cultural resources,” Herbert said in a statement Thursday. “And they should not be created over the objections of local communities.”
Tribes and environmental groups argue that the plans open up access for destructive activities in sensitive cultural areas and vital natural landscapes. They say Thursday’s decision to open public access to the lands will allow for increased road development and off-road-vehicle use that will affect artifacts and ecosystems. And Grazing and logging will alter the habitats of many important species, they say.
Conservationists are particularly concerned about chaining, a process in which bulldozers drag long chains across terrain to uproot plants and trees.
“These plans represents the lowest common denominator for BLM stewardship,” Stephen Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, one of the plaintiffs in the monuments lawsuits, said in a statement. “One of the wildest landscapes in the lower forty-eight states will be lost if these plans are carried into action over the next few years."
2020-02-06 17:01:00Z
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/02/06/trump-administration-will-allow-drilling-logging-sensitive-federal-lands-utah/
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