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Interior Secretary Recommends Biden Restore National Monuments Trump Trashed
Valley of the Gods, Bears Ears National Monument, Utah.
RICHARD MASCHMEYER/ROBERTHARDING VIA GETTY IMAGES
The Biden administration looks set to undo former President Donald Trump’s attacks on the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has advised President Joe Biden to reverse former President Donald Trump’s rollbacks of three national monuments, restoring them to their original boundaries and reinstating more stringent protections, according to media reports.
The expected move, which The Washington Post first reported Monday and The New York Times later confirmed, is a first step toward fulfilling the president’s campaign promise to “reverse the Trump administration’s assaults on America’s natural treasures.”
Biden tasked Haaland with reviewing Trump’s dismantling of protected monument sites — Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in southern Utah and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the Atlantic coast — and recommending whether to undo the changes.
Haaland’s recommendations, detailed in a still-confidential report to the White House, include restoring the original boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, as well as reinstating fishing and deep-sea mining restrictions in Northeast Canyons, according to The Washington Post.
The Interior Department declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Haaland traveled to Utah in April to tour the two monuments and meet with local stakeholders, including members of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which is made up of the five Native American tribes that petitioned the Obama administration to grant Bears Ears monument status. She submitted her report to the White House earlier this month, but it has not yet been made public.
The recommended reversal comes nearly four years after the Trump administration conducted a sham review of more than two dozen national monument designations. That ultimately led to Trump carving more than 2 million acres from the southern Utah sites. The boundary of Bears Ears, a 1.35 million-acre landscape that several tribes consider sacred, was cut by 85%. Nearby 1.87 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante, the largest land national monument in the country and rich in both archeological and paleontological resources, was cut roughly in half.