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The Inertia

In an effort to “free up” millions of acres of sanctioned public lands, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requesting the Department of Interior to review the protection status of two dozen national monuments. All sites were deemed by the three previous presidents as needing federal protection. The review will be led by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who will focus mainly on The Bears Ears National Monument, a site located in Utah believed to hold significant fossil fuel reserves.

In 2016, President Barack Obama declared Bears Ears a national monument, a designation similar to a national park. Unlike national parks, however, national monuments do not need congressional approval to receive their protected status. Instead, they only require the approval of the President through the power of the Antiquities Act, a policy that seeks to protect significant natural, cultural, or scientific features. The first land protected under the Antiquities Act was Devil’s Tower, a popular climbing destination in Wyoming.

Bears Ears’ recent designation as a national monument was a triumphant moment for environmentalists, climbers and outdoor enthusiasts alike. In 2015, Patagonia launched a campaign called “Defend Bears Ears,” bringing awareness to the fight in preserving the area for future generations of climbers, campers, hikers, and fisherman. During the campaign, the outdoor company released a short documentary called “Defined by the Line,” which followed the story of climber and environmental activist Josh Ewing, whose love for the sport brought him to Bears Ears on occasional weekend trips. He was particularly drawn to Indian Creek, the mecca for sandstone crack climbing located in the northern part of the national monument.

“I was so focused on climbing as a sport,” Ewing says in the documentary, “then all of a sudden it had nothing to do with number grades. It became a way of seeing a place that a lot of other people have never seen.”

With more trips to Bears Ears, Ewing began to notice the effects that oil drilling, looting, and careless visitation had on the area. Walking away from a six-figure communications consultant job for political campaigns in Salt Lake City, Ewing moved himself and his girlfriend to Bluff, Utah, a small town bordering Bears Ears, to take on the role as executive director of Friends of Cedar Mesa, a nonprofit whose mission is “to ensure that the public lands in San Juan County, with all their cultural and natural values, are respected and protected.”

The Bears Ears was then given its National Monument designation in 2016 tith the efforts of Friends of Cedar Mesa, the native groups in the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, and the support of several outdoor recreation brands.

“We hope reasonable people will put aside their differences and rally behind good stewardship for this outstanding landscape,” Friends of Cedar Mesa stated in a press release shortly after Bears Ears received its national monument status. “By working together to make sure our concerns and needs are considered in the future management of the Monument, we will achieve far more than by continuing to sow seeds of division amongst the diverse communities that treasure the area.”

“While a Monument designation was not our first choice, we celebrate this moment and are prepared to stand up for this landscape being permanently protected.”

Soon after, Utah governor Gary Herbert began lobbying President Donald Trump to roll back protections of the area. In February, the Utah state legislature passed a resolution asking Trump to undo Obama’s designation of the national monument.

Outdoor companies quickly fought back. Patagonia and REI, two major brands in an outdoor industry that brings in an annual $120 billion a year, decided to pull their showcases from Outdoor Retailer’s yearly tradeshow in Salt Lake City, an event bringing significant revenue into the state for more than two decades. Other companies followed suit. Shortly after, Outdoor Retailer announced that it would be moving its trade show out of Utah once its contract ended in 2018.

“The outdoor industry creates three times the amount of jobs than the fossil fuels industry,” Patagonia CEO Yvon Chouinard stated in an op-ed about their position backing out of the trade show, “yet the Governor has spent most of his time in office trying to rip taxpayer-owned lands out from under us and hand them over to drilling and mining companies.”

Corley Kenna, the communications director for Patagonia, warns that if Trump attempts to renege Bears Ears status as a national monument, then the company “will use every tool available to speak out and fight against it.”

Back in Washington D.C., Trump and his cabinet members are sending out mixed signals regarding his recently signed executive order to review the two dozen national monuments, including Bears Ears. Interior Secretary Zinke, who is tasked with reviewing the monuments and the Antiquities Act, assures that the order does not strip any monument designation, nor does it loosen any environmental conservation regulations. President Trump, on the other hand, has been more critical of the Antiquities Act and the national monument designations, claiming that these lands are “locked up,” that they have gotten “worse and worse,” and the executive order will help “free [the lands] up.”

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club have made their stances on Trump’s executive order clear: the president is taking steps to dismantle the country’s national monuments to the interests of developers and oil companies.

“Our public lands help define who we are as a nation. Instead of asking which parts of our history and heritage we could eliminate, the Trump administration should be asking how we can make our outdoors reflect the full story of our country,” Dan Ritzman, Sierra Club’s Western Public Lands Protection Director, stated in a recent newsletter.

Although it’s certain that presidents can tweak the size of national monuments (it’s happened before with Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Monument), delisting monuments altogether is an issue yet to be tested in courts.

“In the first one hundred days, we’ve taken historic actions in eliminating wasteful regulations,” Trump said in a press release on Wednesday. “They’re being eliminated like nobody’s ever seen before. There’s never been anything like it. Sometimes I look at the things I’m signing and think ‘Maybe people won’t like it, but I’m doing the right thing.'”

 
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