Block Illegal Mining Claims in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante

You need to act now to block the illegal mining claims being filed in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. Within one day of Trump's proclamation gutting Bears Ears by over 90%, Kimmerle Mining filed 7 claims with the San Juan County Recorder's Office. Two more claims followed in Grand Staircase-Escalante on August 6. These filings violate Trump's own proclamations, which prohibit new claims until September 11, 2026 — and the underlying reductions are themselves illegal. This isn't speculation about future harm. Kimmerle Mining previously excavated a mine shaft on a Bears Ears claim after Trump's 2017 reduction. The monument protects over 2,510 river miles flowing into Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon, and over a hundred thousand ancestral sites sacred to the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Zuni Tribe, and other Tribal nations. The Bureau of Land Management must reject these claims immediately. The administration is handing irreplaceable public land to extractive industry before the legal dust has even settled. Demand that BLM reject these premature, unlawful filings and use every tool available to restore full monument protections. These landscapes belong to all of us — not to mining companies racing to stake claims before anyone can stop them.