The state of Utah and a pair of rural counties sued President Joe Biden’s administration this week over the government’s move to return national monuments in the state to their original massive boundaries. The president announced his decision to re-expand the monuments last year after former President Donald Trump downsized them early in his term.
At issue are are two major monuments in southeastern Utah, NPR reported: the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument, which covers nearly 1.9 million acres and saw its size reduced by about half in 2017, and the Bears Ears Monument, a 1.4 million-acre monument that Trump had reduced by almost three-quarters.
In October 2021, President Biden restored the monuments to their original sizes. Utah says that the president’s actions were unlawful and violated the 1906 Antiquities Act, which allows “general protection for any kind of cultural or national resource” at the president’s discretion. State officials say the federal government is interpreting the act too broadly and with disregard for the laws intended purpose of protecting historical and archaeological site, the Associated Press said. Utah’s lawsuit refers to parts of the act that say monuments should cover “the smallest area possible” when it comes to preservation goals.
The debate over monuments that put land under federal control and off-limits to development, mining and farming is not new. It has been a hot debate for the last several administrations.
The American rural west has seen the biggest fights over the feds’ growing control of public land because 93% of federal land is in the nation’s 13 western states, according to the Washington Post. Two-thirds (66.5%) of Utah land is federally owned — which is actually second to Nevada at 81.
On one side of the ongoing Utah fights are rural, Republican-leaning communities skeptical of federal overreach on lands that contain significant portions of the state’s natural resources — including 9 billion tons of coal. On the other side, are Indian tribes with ancestral ties to the land and conservationists who want federal protections for preventing exploitation.
