A new US government plan had cleared the way for coal mining and oil and gas drilling on land stripped from Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante monument by the Trump administration two years ago.

The plan, released by the Bureau of Land Management on Friday, would also open more lands to cattle grazing and recreation and acknowledges there could be “adverse effects” on land and resources in the monument.



Trump drastically shrank the southern Utah monument in 2017, as well as the nearby Bears Ears national monument, in what represented the largest elimination of public lands protections in US history. Some 800,000 acres were removed from the Grand Staircase.

The move was widely condemned by conservation and paleontology groups, who have filed ongoing lawsuits challenging Trump’s authority to downsize the monument.

They say the new BLM plan lacks adequate protections for the land and reiterated their concern that the years spent creating the plan were a waste of taxpayer resources because the lawsuits remain unresolved.

Steve Bloch, the legal director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance conservation group, said it was unforgivable to cut the monument in half and downgrade the excluded lands to what he calls “garden variety public lands”.

“Grand Staircase-Escalante is one of the nation’s public land crown jewels and from the outset the Trump administration was hell-bent on destroying this place,” Bloch said.

The allowance for coal, oil and gas extraction on the lands cut was expected as the Trump administration carried out a “reckless” plan to undo protections on pristine lands, said Heidi McIntosh, the managing attorney of Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountains office.

“First, they ripped it in half and now they are officially opening the door to all kinds of destructive activities,” she said. “It’s really a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry.”

Harry Barber, the acting manager of the national monument, stressed that protections would remain even though the lands were no longer within the monument.

“It’s not a free-for-all,” Barber said. “That seems to be what I hear a lot, people feeling like now anybody can go out and do anything they want to do on these lands. But, they need to realize that we still have our rules and policies.”



The monument has seen a 63% increase in visitors over the past decade, hosting 1.1m people from October 2017 through September 2018, according to US government figures.

The BLM plan would add a few safeguards for the cliffs, canyons, waterfalls and arches still inside Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that weren’t in a proposed plan issued last year.

Utah’s Highway 12 cuts through the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument. Photograph: Alamy

Among them are opening fewer acres to ATVs and cancelling a plan that would have allowed people to collect some non-dinosaur fossils in certain areas.

Barber told the Associated Press the plan reflects changes made after considering input from the public and considering an assessment that there are enough protections already in place.

“There are people who graze livestock, people that like to hunt, people that like to hike, people that like to trail run,” said Barber, who has worked at the monument since it was created. “We’re trying to be fair.”

The plan is expected to go into effect after a public review period.

Thus far, market dynamics have limited interest in a large coal reserve found in the now unprotected lands.

But an economic analysis estimates coal production could lead to $208m in annual revenues and $16.6m in royalties for the US government. Oil and gas wells in that area could produce $4.1m in annual revenues, it says.

Bill Clinton created the monument in 1996 using the Antiquities Act, which sets guidelines calling for the “smallest area compatible with proper care and management” of artifacts to be protected.

Trump cut the size of Grand Staircase-Escalante amid a review of 27 national monuments by then-interior secretary Ryan Zinke. Trump downsized Bears Ears national monument by about 85%.

Trump said scaling back the two monuments reversed federal overreach. The move earned cheers from Republican leaders in Utah who lobbied him to undo protections by Democratic presidents that they considered overly broad.