- United States
- Utah
- Letter
Reverse Trump's executive order gutting Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. Stripping nearly three million acres of protected land to hand it over to oil, gas, and mining corporations is not fiscal policy — it's destruction. Our public lands are not a subsidy program for extractive industries.
Bears Ears was designated at the request of five tribal nations — Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Uintah-Ouray Ute — who consider it sacred ground containing ancestral villages, burial sites, and cliff dwellings. Davina Smith-Idjesa of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition called this decision "heartbreaking" and noted that federal officials bypassed their legal obligation to consult with affected tribes. Earthjustice has already called the order illegal, arguing the Antiquities Act gives presidents the power to create monuments, not demolish them. Trump tried this same move in 2017 and it was reversed. It should be reversed again.
These monuments belong to all of us — and to the Indigenous nations whose heritage is literally buried in that soil. Mining and drilling companies have plenty of land. They don't need sacred ground. Push back on this order and fight to restore full protections to both monuments.