Americans on both sides of the aisle have anxiously awaited the decision. On Saturday thousands of people gathered in cowboy hats and ski jackets on the steps of Utah’s capitol to protest the president’s expected reduction. “Defend the sacred,” read one sign. “Keep your tiny hands off our public lands,” read another.
Further south, at the edge of the monument, another group gathered to applaud Mr. Trump’s decision, standing beneath a banner: “Thank you for listening to local voices.”
Who stands to benefit?
Mr. Trump’s decision to reduce Bears Ears would be viewed as a victory for Republican lawmakers, fossil fuel companies and rural Westerners who argue that monument designations are federal land grabs that limit revenue and stifle local control. And it would be considered a defeat for many environmentalists and recreation groups and for the five Indian nations who have fought for generations to protect the Bears Ears region.
The Navajo Nation has vowed to challenge the decision in court, along with other tribes and conservation and outdoor industry groups.
“We will stand and fight all the way,” said Russell Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation, adding that the United States government had already taken “millions of acres of my people’s land.”
“We have suffered enough,” he said.
In a statement before the announcement, Senator Hatch, an opponent of Bears Ears, said he believed President Trump’s decision was a “win for everyone.”
The federal government controls about two-thirds of the land in Utah, and the state’s leading politicians have long pushed for more local control of public lands.
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Mr. Trump is scheduled to make his announcement at the state capitol, accompanied by Gov. Gary Herbert and others. “This is really nothing more than a realignment, a reconfiguration of the boundaries,” Mr. Herbert said.
What are national monuments?
The president is also expected to announce that he will cut another national monument in Utah, Grand Staircase-Escalante, to about half its current size. And he could make changes to 25 other monuments under review, including Gold Butte in Nevada and Cascade-Siskiyou in Oregon and California.
National monuments are lands that are protected from some kinds of development by law. They are roughly analogous to national parks, but while national parks are created by Congress, national monuments are created by presidents through the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that has been used by both Republicans and Democrats over the years to protect millions of acres of federal land.
Each monument has its own specific restrictions. At Bears Ears, for example, federal rules forbid new mining and drilling, but allow the interior department to continue to issue cattle grazing leases.
Supporters of the Antiquities Act say the law is part of the bedrock of American conservation. But some Republican lawmakers, particularly those in Utah, argue that recent presidents have abused the act, using it to put aside far more land than its language permits. The law says that presidents should limit designations to the “the smallest area compatible” with the care of the natural features that the monument is meant to protect.
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Why is the legal fight so important?
Mr. Trump would not be the first president to shrink a monument. Woodrow Wilson reduced Mount Olympus by half. Franklin Roosevelt cut the Grand Canyon monument at the behest of ranchers. (Both are now national parks.)
But the courts have never ruled on whether a president actually has the power to make these changes. The coming legal battle will probably have far-reaching implications.
If Mr. Trump’s legal challengers win in court, the decision could affirm future presidents’ rights to use the Antiquities Act to extend protection to large areas of public land. And it could cement the boundaries of Bears Ears laid out by President Barack Obama.
But if they lose, Mr. Trump and future presidents could drastically shrink any of the dozens of monuments created by their predecessors, opening the formerly protected terrain for all kinds of development.
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One-hundred and twenty-one scholars recently signed a letter arguing that only Congress can legally shrink a monument. Todd Gaziano of the Pacific Legal Foundation and John Yoo of the University of California, Berkeley’s law school, hold an opposing view, and argue that the power to create a monument “implicitly also includes the power of reversal.”
Why did President Obama set aside the land in the first place?
President Obama created Bears Ears National Monument in December 2016, after years of lobbying by five tribes in the region: the Navajo, the Hopi, the Ute Mountain Ute, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and the Zuni. It is named for a pair of towering buttes — the Bears Ears — that dominate much of the landscape.
Mr. Obama set the boundaries to include 1.3 million acres. Monument supporters say it contains 100,000 sites of archaeological importance, including grave sites, ceremonial grounds and ancient cliff dwellings. In the 1800s, Navajo people used the area’s remote canyons to avoid capture by the Army, and several tribal leaders were born in the shadows of the Bears Ears.
The monument’s foundation document, written by the White House staff during the Obama administration, describes its sharp pinnacles, broad mesas, solitary hoodoos and verdant hanging gardens in poetic terms.
“From earth to sky, the region is unsurpassed in wonders,” the document says. “As one of the most intact and least roaded areas in the contiguous United States, Bears Ears has that rare and arresting quality of deafening silence.”
Why is the Trump administration considering changes?
For its supporters, the Bears Ears monument designation came to symbolize an indigenous victory after centuries of frustration.
For its opponents, it was an abuse of power by Mr. Obama, an infringement on the right of local people to decide what happens in their backyard.
“Our country places a high premium on consent,” said Phil Lyman, a county commissioner who lives at the edge of the monument. The designation, he said, “felt very nonconsensual.”
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In September, a version of Mr. Zinke’s report recommended changing the boundaries of six of the 27 monuments under review.
But he also recommended the creation of three new monuments. One was at Camp Nelson, Ky., a post where black soldiers trained during the Civil War. Another was the Mississippi home of the civil rights hero Medgar Evers.
The third was in an area called the Badger-Two Medicine, in Mr. Zinke’s home state of Montana.
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