<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump is shrinking two national monuments in Utah, accepting the recommendation of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to reverse protections established by two Democratic presidents to more than 3.6 million acres.<\/p>\n
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he was \u201cincredibly grateful\u201d that Trump called him Friday to say he is approving Zinke\u2019s proposal on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. He and Trump \u201cbelieve in the importance of protecting these sacred antiquities,\u201d but there is \u201ca better way to do it\u201d by working with local officials and tribes, Hatch said.<\/p>\n
Hatch\u2019s office said Trump said, \u201cI\u2019m approving the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase recommendation for you, Orrin.\u201d<\/p>\n
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would not confirm that Trump will shrink the Utah monuments, saying she did not want to \u201cget ahead of the president\u2019s announcement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zinke recommended that the two Utah monuments be shrunk, along with Nevada\u2019s Gold Butte and Oregon\u2019s Cascade-Siskiyou.<\/p>\n
Zinke\u2019s recommendation, made public in September, prompted an outcry from environmental groups that promised to take the Trump administration to court to block any attempts to rescind or reduce the monument designations.<\/p>\n
The two Utah monuments encompass more than 3.2 million acres \u2013 an area larger than Connecticut \u2013 and were created by Democratic administrations under a century-old law that allows presidents to protect sites considered historic, geographically or culturally important.<\/p>\n
Bears Ears, designated for federal protection by former President Barack Obama, totals 1.3 million acres in southeastern Utah on land that is sacred to Native Americans and home to tens of thousands of archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs.<\/p>\n
Grand Staircase-Escalante, in southern Utah, includes nearly 1.9 million acres in a sweeping vista larger than the state of Delaware. Republicans have howled over the monument designation since its creation in 1996 by former President Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n
Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said it was \u201ca disgrace\u201d that Trump was moving to undo Bears Ears, which she described as \u201cthe nation\u2019s first national monument created to honor Native American cultural heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suh called it \u201ca travesty\u201d that Trump was \u201ctrying to unravel a century\u2019s worth of conservation history \u2013 all behind closed doors,\u201d adding: \u201cThe American people want these special places protected.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Republican-led San Juan County, Utah commission welcomed Trump\u2019s action on Bears Ears. The three-member panel objected to the monument designation, saying it was too large and could hurt residents\u2019 ability to earn a living from livestock grazing.<\/p>\n
They contend there are other ways to protect the area and said the monument declaration attracts more visitors who could potentially damage the ruins and rock art.<\/p>\n
Davis Filfred, a Navajo Nation lawmaker who supports the monument designation, called Trump\u2019s action unfair.<\/p>\n
Tribal groups have vowed to sue over any reduction to Bears Ears, but Filfred said Trump \u201chas been sued so many times already I don\u2019t know if that means anything to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Associated Press writers Michelle Price in Salt Lake City and Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Ariz., contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Utah, Grand Staircase faces reduction in size<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,122,315],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-103012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-monument-and-heritage-site","tag-president-donald-trump"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103012"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=103012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}