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President Donald Trump will fly into Utah on Monday to announce that he’ll shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments…
Trump will travel to Salt Lake City, where he’ll explain why he’s changing the boundaries of the two monuments, the sources said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the trip.
The president is not expected to visit either monument or stay in Utah overnight…
Sen. Orrin Hatch and other Utah officials have pressed Trump to either eliminate or shrink the monuments, which cover large swaths of federal lands in the southern part of the state.
Did you think the fossil fuel cretins would rollover when they have a scumbag they own in the White House?
“The tribes view this as an affront to themselves and their own self-determination,” said Natalie Landreth, senior staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund. “All of us, all five tribes, will be suing jointly the day he makes an announcement.”
Five tribes — the Hopi, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni and the Ute Indian Tribe — make up the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition that advocated for the monument. Landreth said they have not determined which federal court the group would file the lawsuit in but that it would be about violating the Constitution’s separation of powers.
“This illegal action will cement Trump’s legacy as one of the worst presidents in modern history,” said Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Trump has no clue how much people love these sacred and irreplaceable landscapes, but he’s about to find out. He’s shown his blatant disregard for public lands, Native Americans and the law. We look forward to seeing him in court.”
The thugs who pimp for fossil fuel interests throughout the American West are accustomed to having their own way in federal courts. Between Rapacious Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats they haven’t faced much opposition in decades. Meanwhile, true environmental movements – apart from slightly green-tinged politicians – have built a base at the grassroots capable of defeating a surprising number of phonies whose entire view of wilderness and nature derives from overflights, usually on someone else’s dime.
Eideard 
“Rich Fossil Trove Found on Land Removed From Bears Ears Monument : The discovery calls attention to rollbacks on national monuments, which have weakened protections for important fossil sites.” (National Geographic 2/22/18) https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/fossils-removed-bears-ears-national-monument-utah-spd/
“Oil Was Central in Decision to Shrink Bears Ears Monument, Emails Show” (NYT) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/climate/bears-ears-national-monument.html “Most of the deliberations took place behind closed doors. The internal Interior Department emails — more than 25,000 pages in total — were obtained by The New York Times after it sued the agency in federal court with the assistance of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale University Law School. The lawsuit cited the agency’s failure to respond to an open records request in August asking for internal records related to the deliberations.
The bulk of the documents made public by the Interior Department — about 20,000 pages of them — detail the yearslong effort during the Obama administration to create new monuments, including input from environmental groups, Indian tribes, state officials and members of Congress. President Barack Obama created or expanded 29 national monuments during his tenure, representing a total of about 553 million acres, more than any of his predecessors.
The remaining pages, a total of approximately 4,500 files, relate to the Trump administration’s reconsideration of these actions by Mr. Obama and other presidents.”
A Canadian mining company has announced it has acquired the right to mine some of the 1 million acres of land Trump eliminated from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. https://wilderness.org/blog/mining-company-now-staking-claim-invade-grand-staircase-escalante-national-monument
Also: “Public lands are being sold in secret on the internet” https://thinkprogress.org/public-lands-oil-gas-lease-internet-secret-843240d282cb/
“A Judge Rules That Trump Can Keep Secret His Reasons for Shrinking Our National Monuments” https://psmag.com/environment/a-judge-rules-that-trump-can-keep-secret-his-reasons-for-shrinking-our-national-monuments In the latest development in the efforts by environmental advocates, tribes, and outdoor retailers to challenge President Donald Trump’s shrinking of two Utah monuments, a district judge on Monday ruled that the Department of Justice (DOJ) doesn’t have to turn over legal documents regarding the president’s decision, the Associated Press reports.
The withheld documents “contain legal advice to the president and his advisers and should remain protected,” the judge wrote. “While public disclosure is an important and necessary part of any free society, so too is candor and privacy when those at the highest levels of government strive to determine the best course of action.”
So much for the conceit of government of, by, and for the people.
A group of 21 mayors and council members from around Utah have signed onto briefs with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in support of lawsuits filed against President Donald Trump’s shrinking of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/11/19/more-than-utah-mayors/
The amicus friend-of-the-court briefs — filed Monday and drafted by the Harvard Law School’s Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic and the Salt Lake City Attorney’s Office — contend that the process was flawed, with little input from local voices, and that the boundary reduction will have detrimental economic and environmental effects in the state.
See also Animated Illustration by Christopher Cherrington/The Salt Lake Tribune. https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*V2gaNJNMlMc4St67cYUAJQ.gif and “Battle Over Bears Ears”, a one-hour documentary produced by KUED (University of Utah PBS affiliate). https://www.kued.org/whatson/kued-productions/battle-over-bears-ears
Another Front Opens in the Republican War on Science : Justice Department’s Environmental Hit Man Says There’s No ‘Time or Space’ to Address Archaeologists’ Concerns for Native American Sites https://www.dcreport.org/2018/12/28/another-front-opens-in-the-republican-war-on-science/ Attorney General Jean Williams asked a federal judge not to accept legal documents from archaeologists objecting to Trump’s largely dismantling two national monuments in Utah. She said the blitz of documents was “inherently prejudicial” to Trump and the other defendants.
“Federal defendants do not have adequate time or space to address every formulation of the arguments,” Williams wrote.
Williams works in the environmental division, led by Jeffrey Bossert Clark, who represented BP in lawsuits over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the nation’s largest oil spill.
The Hopi Tribe, other American Indian tribes and environmental organizations sued Trump over eliminating 85% of Bears Ears in Utah, the first national monument designated at the request of Native Americans, and carving Grand Staircase-Escalante, also in Utah, into three smaller monuments.
Legal scholars Michael Blumm and Olivier Jamin have called reducing national monuments and other attacks on public land by Trump and Republicans “the most substantial rollback in public lands protections in American history.”
The Interior Department reduced the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments so that 2 million more acres could be leased to oil and gas companies. The Greater Cedar Mesa area, which was removed from the monument, is “one of the most significant concentrations of archaeological sites in the nation.” https://bearsearscoalition.org/portfolio-items/cedar-mesa/
“When Everybody Wants A Piece Of ‘God’s Country'” https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/735988755/when-everybody-wants-a-piece-of-god-s-country
“Utah restaurateurs fight Trump cuts to national monument” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/utah-restaurateurs-fight-trump-cuts-to-national-monument “Last month, the government accountability office confirmed it is investigating whether or not the interior department broke federal law in doing so. In the meantime, some local business owners, including two restaurant owners are continuing to fight the cuts to the national monuments on their own.”
“Why Two Chefs in Small-Town Utah Are Battling President Trump” (2018) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/why-two-chefs-in-small-town-utah-decided-to-sue-president-trump
The Trump administration has finalized a proposal for management of Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that allows more cattle grazing around the monument and allows some area around the monument to be mined for coal or natural gas.
The Associated Press reported Friday that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has issued its final proposal for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which cuts 1,345 square miles from the monument’s legal designation.
The agency’s plan also does not recognize any areas of critical environmental concern and allows for visitors to take non-dinosaur fossils from some areas outside of the actual monument itself. https://apnews.com/c70b8c6625d340138327d1ca3c13d5ed
President Joe Biden on Friday restored two sprawling national monuments in Utah, reversing a decision by President Donald Trump that opened for mining and other development hundreds of thousands of acres of rugged lands sacred to Native Americans and home to ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.
The Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in southern Utah encompass more than 3.2 million acres — an area nearly the size of Connecticut — and were created by Democratic administrations under a century-old law that allows presidents to protect sites considered historic, geographically or culturally important. https://news.yahoo.com/biden-restore-3-national-monuments-043531077.html
Utah tribes secure co-management role for Bears Ears National Monument : Federal government signs historic agreement with tribes to help manage the national monument. https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2022/06/22/utah-tribes-secure-co/
“…The inter-tribal coalition members now serve as commissioners. For the past few years, the coalition quietly worked on a proposed management plan that will soon be submitted to the federal agencies, which also initiated a process to produce a management plan to replace the one the Trump administration finalized in 2020 without tribal involvement.”