#bearsearsmonument — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #bearsearsmonument, aggregated by home.social.
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#Conservation Groups Challenge Trump’s Decimation of Two #NationalMonuments in #Utah
@WesternWatershedsProject , September 2, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. — "Conservation groups today challenged President Trump’s July 2026 unlawful decimation of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Southern Utah. The groups filed suit in U.S. District Court seeking to reactivate litigation against Trump’s 2017 monument rollbacks and challenge both sets of illegal proclamations together.
"Conservation groups were joined by two additional coalitions of monument supporters, who also filed to renew their litigation on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante today.
" 'Slashing protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments is unlawful and disregards the Tribes who have stewarded these lands since time immemorial,' said Charlie Luke, The Wilderness Society Utah state director. 'These protections were put in place for a reason: to safeguard cultural resources, wildlife habitat, clean air and water, and the freedom of future generations to experience these lands. The #WildernessSociety will continue this fight in court to ensure our treasured Utah national monuments remain protected.”
" 'Not only is the attempt to slash Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments illegal, it’s also deeply unpopular,' said Michael Toll, staff attorney for the Grand Canyon Trust. “A 2024 poll found that more than 70% of Utah voters supported keeping Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante protected as national monuments; these illegal cuts are wildly out of touch with what the majority of Utahns want.”
"In July, President #Trump illegally redrew the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, reducing both monuments by more than 90%. The attack was one of the largest rollbacks of public lands protections in U.S. history, cutting a million acres more than the 2017 reductions.
"Multiple mining claims were filed in both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante immediately after Trump decimated the monuments. Conservation groups have urged the Bureau of Land Management to reject the premature and unlawful claims.
“Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante should have never been put in jeopardy to begin with as no president has the authority to erase or shrink national monuments,' said Erika Pollard, Southwest campaign director with the National Parks Conservation Association. 'These monuments are among the most beloved public lands in #Utah, visited by millions who also travel to neighboring national park sites – Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Glen Canyon and Natural Bridges. Attempting to dismantle the groundbreaking Bears Ears Commission and co-stewardship structures is an insult to the #TribalNations that deserve a leading role in managing their #AncestralLands. Support for these monuments has never wavered and neither will our fight to protect them.'
" 'The gutting of these two monuments is yet another example of this administration rewarding industry with special access to the public’s land and resources,' said Chris Krupp, public lands attorney for #WildEarthGuardians. 'Trump didn’t unlock the monument for recreation, as he dishonestly claimed, but he did open up a cherished landscape to mining. It’s no surprise #MiningCompanies are already taking advantage of that.'
"The #AntiquitiesAct of 1906 authorizes presidents to designate national monuments, but it does not give them the power to shrink the monuments created by their predecessors or to undercut their protections. Congress’s intent was clear: the Antiquities Act must be used to protect the nation’s archaeological, cultural, and scientific wonders.
" 'President Trump cannot erase America’s national monuments with the stroke of a pen. The Antiquities Act gives presidents the authority to protect places like Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, not dismantle them for #mining and other industrial interests,' said Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program. 'The monuments preserve an irreplaceable cultural landscape, world-renowned fossil resources, and extraordinary wildlands that are shared by all of us. We’re going to court because the law is clear, and future generations deserve to inherit these remarkable places with the protections they were promised.'
" 'President #Trump’s unlawful attack dismantling Grand Staircase-Escalante and #BearsEars National Monuments was a dark day for America and our nation’s long tradition of protecting parks, monuments and wild places for current and future generations,' said Steve Bloch, legal director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). 'With the filing of these lawsuits, we intend to make sure Trump doesn’t have the final word over the fate of these treasured landscapes. We’ll be watching closely for on-the-ground mischief like new mining claims and illegal vehicle use and are ready to swing into action to protect the monuments from any activities that can leave lasting damage.”
"#GrandStaircaseEscalante National Monument — home to dinosaur fossils not found anywhere else in the world — is often described as a 'dinosaur Shangri-la.' It was established as a national monument in 1996, and in the two decades since it was protected, paleontologists have unearthed #fossils from 21 previously undiscovered dinosaur species.
"The region also holds great cultural significance to numerous Tribes. It is renowned for the remarkable geologic features for which it is named — a series of massive, stepped cliff formations that form, literally, a grand staircase. It is home to serpentine canyons that provide endless hiking adventures and streams that support diverse populations of native plant and animal life."
#USPol #Zuni #EndangeredSpecies #NationalMonuments #ProtectBearsEars #ProtectTheSacred #StolenLands #CulturalGenocide #LandBack
#NationalParks #BearsEarsMonument #NoMining -
What the #BearsEars monument means to a #NativeAmerican
Jim Enote, a member of the #Zuni tribe, describes his people's deep connection to a contested place—their ancestral homeland.
#ProtectBearsEars #ProtectTheSacred #BearsEarsMonument #USPol #StolenLands #CulturalGenocide
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From #Yosemite to #BearsEars, Erasing #NativeAmericans From #USNationalParks
The foundational myth of America’s National Parks is one of heroic preservation of “pristine wilderness” — but places like Yosemite were already home to thriving communities that cherished the #environment around them.
by Hunter Oatman-Stanford
"Today, the foundational myth of America’s National Parks revolves around the heroic preservation of 'pristine wilderness,' places supposedly devoid of human inhabitants that were saved in an unaltered state for future generations. This is obviously a falsehood: Places like Yosemite were already home to thriving communities that had long cherished—and changed—the environment around them. #GeorgeCatlin’s paintings are vivid reminders that the vast expanses of our western frontier were not empty, but rather brimming with human cultures.
"'#NativeAmericans would later be put on display like animals in a zoo.'
"Though the National Park Service prevented wholesale #industrialization, they still packaged the wilderness for consumption, creating a scenic, pre-historical fantasy surrounded by roads and tourist accommodations, all designed to mask the violence inherent to these parks’ creation. More than a century later, the #UnitedStates has done little to acknowledge the government-led #genocide of #NativePopulations, as well as the continued hardships they face because of the many #BadFaith #treaties enacted by the U.S. government. This story is an elemental part of our National Park system, the great outdoor museum of the American landscape, but the myth continues to outweigh the truth. How did the National Park Service evict Yosemite’s indigenous communities and erase their history, and can it come to terms with this troubling legacy today?
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"Despite the obvious claims of indigenous peoples to their lands, white officials frequently justified their removal by claiming that #NativeAmericans weren’t good stewards of the new American frontier. In its excellent exhibition, 'Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations,' the National Museum of the American Indian points out the myriad ways the United States government repeatedly lied about, altered, and disregarded legal contracts intended to secure native access to the land they already lived on. Beyond this egregious, criminal behavior on the part of U.S. officials, they also relied on written documentation, disadvantaging tribal officials who were accustomed to oral agreements or not fluent in English. Sometimes contracts were even negotiated by individuals that had no power to speak for their larger native community."
#NativeAmericanGenocide #StolenLands #CulturalGenocide #LandBack #NationalParks #BearsEarsMonument