basquebromance
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the Washington Post reports:
President Donald Trump began his stewardship of the nation’s public lands by drastically slashing Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, to the cheers of Utah politicians. Now that President Biden is in charge, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is reviewing the sites, Utah’s elected leaders are urging caution and deliberation, warning that Congress should be given a chance to legislate a permanent settlement on the area instead of leaving its fate to executive action.
Bears Ears cannot and should not wait for long.
The 1906 Antiquities Act allows the president to protect notable public lands without going through Congress. Until Trump, presidents had respected their predecessors’ monument designations. Congress often accepted the creation of national monuments as motivation to codify and expand protections, by, for example, eventually upgrading them to national parks.
But President Barack Obama’s designation of Bears Ears and President Bill Clinton’s of Grand Staircase were controversial; these Democratic presidents restricted the use of wide swaths of federal land in a deeply Republican state. President George W. Bush resisted the urge to slice up Grand Staircase; in fact, he created in his second term a massive national monument of his own around Hawaii.
Trump was less judicious, in 2017 cutting Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand Staircase by half. Now activists are asking Biden to restore — or even expand — the old borders.
Wild swings in the size of these monuments at the start of each new administration are a poor way to oversee the land. But Utah’s leaders had their chance four years ago to advance a compromise bill setting permanent boundaries, and they failed to do so.
