By Hannah Grover
About eight years ago, I joined reporters at a small municipal airport in southeast Utah waiting for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to arrive.
The tension was obvious. At one location, protestors lined the highway asking Zinke not to reduce the size of the Bears Ears National Monument. At another, a different group of protesters requested a complete repeal of the controversial monument.
As I drove into Blanding, Utah, the night before, I saw signs both in support and opposition of the national monument.
Now history appears to be repeating itself as President Donald Trump’s administration is looking at rescinding or reducing some national monument designations. Once again, Bears Ears is on the chopping block, as is a New Mexico site — Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in the Las Cruces area.
This is the second time Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks has come into the president’s cross-hairs. During Trump’s previous term, it was among the more than two dozen national monuments that then Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reviewed. While Zinke recommended reducing the size of some of those national monuments, he did not call for any changes in the size of Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks.
During his review, Zinke traveled to many of the national monuments including Organ Mountains, where he met with advocates and New Mexico’s senators.
The monuments he did recommend reducing in size included Bears Ears National Monument, a controversial monument that President Barack Obama designated shortly before leaving office. Bears Ears National Monument is the ancestral home of the Pueblo people and the designation came after intensive advocacy by the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition, a group of tribes including New Mexico’s Pueblo of Zuni and the Navajo Nation that banded together to protect the sacred landscape.
Bears Ears was the first monument Zinke visited as part of his review and he was met with protesters at every step.
Throughout the review process, a question kept circulating: Does one president have the authority to completely rescind a national monument designated by another president?
Generally, legal experts agreed that a president could not rescind a monument designation, however they weren’t quite as clear when it came to reducing the monument’s size — which Trump did with Bears Ears. Trump slashed Bears Ears to about 15% of its original size, a move that President Joe Biden quickly reversed. Trump also reduced the size of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, also located in Utah.
Zinke highlighted historical precedence, including past presidents reducing the size of national monuments, in his recommendation that Trump reduce Bears Ears. One example he gave was President Dwight Eisenhower’s decision to reduce the size of Great Sand Dunes National Monument in southern Colorado by 25%. Great Sand Dunes was later changed to a national park in 2000 through an act of Congress.
I was working for the USA Today network in its Farmington newsroom in 2017 when I joined reporters from national and local outlets waiting for Zinke to arrive. When he did, he was quickly rushed into a private room with Utah leaders, many of which opposed the monument designation.
Zinke did not speak to reporters until later that day when he met with the press at the Butler Wash overlook. Initial information given to the reporters that day claimed Zinke would meet with them at Mule Canyon, where the famous House on Fire ruins are located. The location change came at last minute and reporters were instead directed to Butler Wash.
The choices he made in who he met with caused some advocacy groups like Utah Diné Bikéyah to wonder if Zinke had already made up his mind by the time he arrived. Those choices included when Zinke visited an anti-monument protest in Blanding to hear concerns from the residents.
When I spoke with those same protestors, I sifted through conspiracy theories such as the idea that the federal government wants to turn the entire southern part of Utah into protected lands and more legitimate concerns such as a White Mesa resident, and member of the White Mesa Ute tribe, who was concerned that access could be cut off to allotments within the monument. Other reasons why people objected to the monument included potential impacts on future energy development, including uranium mining and oil and gas extraction.
The pattern of changing meeting locations continued the second day. There were fewer protesters lining the roads to the meeting location south of Moab on the second day and some of the reporters didn’t get the notice of the changed location until it was too late. As I was leaving the press conference, I met with a reporter from The Washington Post who hadn’t learned about the changed venue in time and had instead chosen to interview protestors.
Those of us who did make it to the press conference huddled in a shelter at a Nature Conservancy property known as Dugout Ranch to get out of the rain.
In the end, four of the 27 monuments on Zinke’s list were reduced. While Organ Mountains scraped by without being reduced in size, Zinke did express concerns about border security and impacts on traditional grazing practices — though U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, quickly pointed out that the national monument does not abut the border.
While Zinke urged advocacy groups not to challenge the reduction in size of Bears Ears National Monument — arguing that drawing out the process would only delay getting adequate protections in place for fragile cultural sites — several Native American tribes including the Navajo Nation and the Pueblo of Zuni filed a lawsuit in federal court.
This time, the list of national monuments is more targeted. During Trump’s past administration, Zinke was tasked with reviewing every national monument designation since 1996.
The Washington Post reported last week that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is considering shrinking at least six national monuments, including Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks.
New Mexico’s congressional delegation had heard rumors that other New Mexico national monuments, including Rio Grande del Norte and Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks, could also be targeted for reductions.
Burgum has confirmed that his agency is reviewing national monuments and could possibly shrink some, though he has not said which ones are on the list.
Like Zinke, Burgum is following an executive order that Trump signed. This executive order directs the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine what the appropriate size is for the individual national monuments.
Burgum has said that the monument review is not a top priority.
In addition to Organ Mountains, Bears Ears is also on the list of monuments reported to be under consideration for reductions in size.
That man is dangerous to our Country and our lives. Impeachment is needed urgently. Keep your little hands off our State of New Mexico this is a Blue state and it will stay that way, the Gop are dishonest, and they lie daily to the American people.
The best book on the evolution of Bears Ears to a national monument is Voices From Bears Ears by Rebecca Robinson.