Trump finalizes plan for the largest elimination of protected land in American history.

[Demovictory9]

https://americanindependent.com/donald-trump-administration-utah-national-monuments-protected-land-drilling-mining-bears-ears-grand-staircase-escalante/

Trump finalizes plan to allow drilling at Utah monuments

The U.S. government implemented final management plans Thursday for two national monuments in Utah that Donald Trump downsized more than two years ago that ensure lands previously off-limits to energy development will be open to mining and drilling despite pending lawsuits.

The lands have generated little interest from energy companies in the two years since Trump cut the size of Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half, said Casey Hammond, acting Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management with the U. S. Department of the Interior.

Hammond said the department had a duty to work on the management plans after Trump signed his proclamations in December 2017, despite the pending lawsuits by conservation, tribal, and paleontology groups aiming to restore the monuments to their original sizes.

"If we stopped and waited for every piece of litigation to be resolved we would never be able to do much of anything around here," he said.

Conservation groups that have called the decision the largest elimination of protected land in American history criticized the administration on Thursday for spending time on management plans they believe will become moot. They contend Trump misused the Antiquities Act to reverse decisions by previous presidents.

A federal judge last year rejected the administration's bid to dismiss the lawsuits. In a recent court filing, tribal groups said the Bears Ears lands are "a living and vital place where ancestors passed from one world to the next, often leaving their mark in petroglyphs or painted handprints, and where modern day tribal members can still visit them."

[brokephibroke]

1. It will be protected again

If you have been there, you know how much of a crime it was to remove protection.

[alittlelark]

4. I have been there. Saw sheep unseen anywhere else, their owners speak only Dine.

An amazing and surreal landscape where time does not seem to exist.

https://images.app.goo.gl/t5sV7JUgRv2fh1FF9

[UniteFightBack]

2. This is what the fine people of Utah voted for. nt

[2naSalit]

3. Among the dominant social group...

money is more sacred than nature.