This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Hundreds of thousands of acres of land that were part of two US national monuments shrunk by Donald Trump are being opened on Friday to mining claims for uranium and other minerals.

It is a symbolic step in a broader conflict over the fate of America’s public lands, on which Trump hopes to encourage greater access for extractive industries.

In December, Trump ordered that Bears Ears national monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument, both in southern Utah and home to ancient Native American sites, spectacular landscapes and rare flora and fauna, be downsized by a total of 2m acres.

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His proclamation judged that large portions of the monuments were not unique or of particular scientific or historic interest, a point fiercely contested by environmentalists, Native American groups and scientists, who have brought five lawsuits.

Today is when “the Trump administration is no longer stopping itself from opening up those lands to development”, said Dan Hartinger, national monuments campaign director at the Wilderness Society.

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A prospector for uranium, gold or other minerals would merely have to hammer poles in the ground or build rock piles demarcating the area they would like to claim, an archaic-seeming approach derived from an 1872 law. For oil and gas it is a lengthier process that, in theory, could see land auctioned off on EnergyNet, a website dubbed “the eBay for public lands”, later this year. Some of the excluded land is still protected under other regulations.

“There is no opening of extraction within the monument boundaries,” noted the interior department spokeswoman Heather Swift.

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Public land belongs to the American people, but private interests can obtain rights to graze, mine or drill on them. According to an estimate by the Center for Biological Diversity, about 800,000 acres of public land – a total larger than the state of Rhode Island – were leased for oil and gas drilling last year.

The prospect of a uranium rush in southern Utah seems unlikely, suggested Sarah Fields, founder of the local watchdog Uranium Watch, because “the price of uranium is so low”.

Energy Fuels Resources, which operates a uranium mill east of Bears Ears, told the Guardian it had no plans to mine anywhere on the former site of the monument.

