News Blip:
Downsized Monuments A Preview of Change
SFGate Reports On Two Proclamations Of Utah's Bears Ears & Escalante National Monuments Being The First In A Series of Intended Shifts To Come.
President Donald Trump's decision to scale back two national monuments established in Utah by his Democratic predecessors poses a question of what else is to come. These have been recorded as the largest reduction of public lands protection in U.S. history. His decision removes about 85 percent of the designation of Bears Ears and about 46 percent of that for Grand Staircase-Escalante, land that potentially could now be leased for energy exploration or opened for recreational activities such as motorized vehicle use or RVing. Of course, there's always opposing stances to drastic moves like this.
Josh Dawsey & Juliet Eilperin from The Washington Post reported that Trump's move to shrink the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments immediately sparked an outpouring of praise from conservative lawmakers as well as activists' protests outside the White House and in Utah. "The two proclamations are the first in a series of major changes Trump intends to make to numerous monuments, which range from a forested patch of the Pacific Northwest to a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean off New England." Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who has reviewed more than two dozen sites established by Democratic and Republican presidents under an executive order Trump signed in April, has recommended downsizing Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou and Nevada's Gold Butte national monuments and shifting the way several others are managed, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post. Both Trump and Zinke implied at a recent conference on the matter that monument designations had impeded public access. "Our public land is for the public to use, not special interests," Zinke said. Amy Roberts, executive director of the Outdoor Industry Association, said in an interview that this notion "is flat-out wrong" noting that since Grand Staircase-Escalante was designated a monument 20 years ago, the state has seen business thrive.
Read the full article at SF Gate.
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