WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 30, 2017 (Gephardt Daily) — President Donald Trump plans to reduce Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by half, according to a report by The Washington Post.
The newspaper says its report is based on documents obtained and on sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The sources noted that Trump could still make changes before he announces his final decision on Monday at the Utah State Capitol, The Washington Post reports.
Cutting the national monuments by those percentages would be the most significant reductions by any president to designations made under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives the president authority to protect imperiled sites on federal lands and in federal waters.
The new proclamations, as it reportedly stands, would split up both monuments into several smaller ones, would cut the overall size of Bears Ears from 1.35 million acres to 201,397 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante from nearly 1.9 million acres to 997,490 acres, the newspaper report says.
Utah Rep. Rob Bishop responded to news of the report by saying it is still supposition until Trump verifies the information, and The Washington Post should not have published the article.
Bishop said his opinion is that any such decision about national monuments should not made by presidential proclamation, but by statute. Such a decision is not something that one should “fiddle around with,” he said.
