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There’s a painful axiom in the conservation community: “To protect land, you have to win the same battle over and over again.”
The fight for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments has resumed. It never really ended.
When President Trump eviscerated these Utah preserves in December 2017, Grand Staircase had been a national monument for more than 20 years. Bears Ears was new, established by President Obama in 2016, and acclaimed as a historic gesture of healing and respect toward the five Native American nations that had proposed the preserve and would share in its management. Trump’s directive reduced the size of Bears Ears by 85%, Grand Staircase by half.