Secretary of Interior Debra Haaland has recommended to President Joe Biden that he restore the boundaries and protections of three national monuments—Grand Staircase-Escalante designated by President Bill Clinton in 1996, and Bears Ears and the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, designated by President Barack Obama in 2016. In the latter case, Republicans whined about the naming as a supposed abuse of authority by Obama. Donald Trump subsequently gutted the protections and shrunk those boundaries, in part it seemed, like so many of his decisions, out of personal animus toward Obama.

The background details and reasoning in Haaland’s recommendation, which she sent to Biden June 2, have yet to be released. In any event, the final decision is up to the president who, on his first day in office, called for a review to determine if restoring the monuments’ original “boundaries and protections would be appropriate.” Now Biden has a chance to restore those boundaries, or perhaps even expand them.

Shortly before he left office, Obama established the 1.35 million-acre monument under the Antiquities Act of 1906, fulfilling the decades-old dreams of American Indians and environmental advocates like the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) to gain government protection for the natural beauty of this red-rock land, the plants and creatures living on it, tens of thousands of Native artifacts and petroglyphs dating back millennia, and sites sacred to the five tribes who worked in coalition with environmental organizations and politicians to make Bears Ears a reality.

The outline shows original boundaries of the two Utah monuments, with the shaded version showing what was left after Trump took the ax to them.

Intent on smashing anything Obama did, a year later Trump, in December 2017, shrank Bears Ears by 85% and cut the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument established by Clinton by almost half. Three lawsuits against the move were immediately filed by tribal, conservation, and paleontology groups to challenge the constitutionality of Trump’s action. With that litigation still working its way through the courts, in February 2020 the Trump regime implemented management plans that opened these lands previously off-limits to energy development, including mining and drilling.

Biden could strictly follow Haaland’s recommendation to reestablish the original boundaries of both monuments or, in the case of Bears Ears, he could expand the boundaries to the 1.9 million acres that the Intertribal Coalition had asked to be included when the monument was designated by Obama. 

But some eco-advocates are concerned about simply reversing Trump’s cuts. One of those is University of Colorado Law School professor Mark Squillace. Simply restoring the boundaries to where they were before Trump got his mitts on them certainly has appeal, he said last November. But he warned that doing so would suggest that Trump’s decision to shrink the site had been valid. “I think it would be a mistake to simply issue new proclamations,” said Squillace, who filed an amicus brief in one of the lawsuits challenging Trump as not having the authority under the Antiquities Act to shrink existing monuments, something he says only Congress can do:

Carol Davenport reports today:

Mr. [Spencer J.] Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, said in a statement that he was disappointed. “I think there’s a better way, and I look forward to talking with the president about how to find a lasting solution that’s better for the land and everyone involved,” he said.

One of those supposedly better ways is to turn everything over to Congress. Utah’s Sen. Mitt Romney likes that idea, and it’s also one most of the rest of Utah’s mostly conservative congressional delegation approves of as well. 

Anyone thinking that such a move might produce a reasonable compromise should remember that one of the reasons President Theodore Roosevelt got the Antiquities Act passed 115 years ago was because Congress wouldn’t act on its own to protect the nation’s environmentally and culturally precious treasures. In Utah, the first proposal in the 1930s was for 4 million protected acres in Bears Ears. That was squelched. In the modern era, talks were meant to bridge the gap between those who wanted extensive Bears Ears lands protected and those who wanted far less. But these talks had been going on sporadically for more than a decade without agreement when Obama took action. 

A key element of the effort to bring Bears Ears into being was tribal involvement. Jessica Douglas and Graham Lee Brewer at High Country News write:

For Indigenous peoples, both inside and outside of Utah, the conflicts were only the most recent in a long history of colonial theft and cultural genocide. Five tribes were involved in the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which were consulted in the monument’s establishment, and three of them — the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe — had been forcibly removed to reservations outside Bears Ears’ original boundaries. And for many of the Indigenous people who call Utah home, racism — both overt and systemic — remains a daily trauma, whether it appears in a racial slur hurled at a Little League game or when the public is allowed to trample the ruins of ancient dwellings.

Nobody is hinting about when Biden may announce his decision in the matter. In addition to these monuments, he should consider that blueprint for indigenous stewardship something that should be applied elsewhere on America’s public lands, including any new monuments he may choose to add to the roster. 

Joaqlin Estus at Indian Country Today noted that the Inter-tribal Coalition had begun a national ad campaign on May 23 urging Biden to take immediate action to not only restore but expand the boundaries:

“This is the broader context where we find ourselves today,” Heart said. “But now we have a new President. And President Biden has the opportunity to begin a new chapter where we are included in the management of public lands. Acknowledging our connection to these landscapes in speeches is important but involving us in the management would be restorative justice in practice.”

A new chapter is most definitely needed.