1. United States
2. Utah
3. Letter

Fight to restore Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. Trump's executive order strips nearly three million acres of protected land — an area close to the size of Connecticut — and hands it to oil, gas, and mining corporations. This is not giving land back to the people. It is giving sacred land to billionaires. Bears Ears was created in 2016 at the direct request of five tribal nations — Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Uintah-Ouray Ute — who consider it sacred ground. It holds ancestral villages, burial sites, cliff dwellings, and petroglyphs. Davina Smith-Idjesa of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition has called this decision "heartbreaking" and pointed out that federal officials bypassed their legal obligation to consult with affected tribal nations. Earthjustice argues the Antiquities Act authorizes presidents to create monuments, not demolish them, and that this move is just as illegal now as it was in 2017. What gets drilled and mined cannot be undrilled and unmined. The damage done to these landscapes and to the communities whose heritage lives in them will outlast any short-term profit. Support the legal challenge, co-sponsor legislation to restore monument boundaries, and make clear that public lands belong to all of us — not to the corporations lining up to extract whatever they can and leave.