2 National Monument Land Reduced by 'over' 1.1 million acres

Been reading on this a bit. According to Nat Geographic there have been about 20 cases of National monuments being reduced in size. The biggest being Woodrow Wilson taking 600,000+ Acres out of Mount olympus. Its not unheard of.

Sometimes there are reasons that aren't clear at the time.

Might be a good thing if it frees up more resources for the more heavily visited parks.

Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921 in office) was 50+ years before the 1976 act. His actions maybe one reason why the act was needed. How many reductions since the act was passed?

Apparently, #42 created Grand Staircase to avoid possible coal finds being exploited. Not the case with #44 on Bears Ear, no indicated resources, and bypassed normal open review periods for local/regional comments. This will likely be in court still when most of us are long gone.

I believe the mining companies want the Bears Ears region for uranium and the Grand Staircase-Escalante for it’s coal. Whether it’s economically feasible at this time to mine either is questionable right now, but that can change. I doubt if Utah residents will see much, if any money out of the mining since they probably don’t own the mining rights. How much fracking will take place? I have no idea. In my mind fracking is incredibly irresponsible.
It would be interesting to see how much cash Utah’s politicians have taken out of the oil/gas/mining companies.

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With all the stupid kardashian and what ever celebrity is pregnant being spotlighted on the news now a days, important REAL news that is happening that affects all of us never reaches the public.

I've been told that this forum has over 7,000 readers. We need to get the word out what is happening to our preserved lands we like to RV to. We need to stand together, speak out and stop this illegal practice per this Act:

"1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act. “Congress made very clear, as a matter of law, that they intend to delegate only that which has been expressly delegated in terms of management of federal lands,” he said — which would mean a president can establish a monument under the Antiquities Act but

not “rescind or substantially reduce” a site,...

Am I missing something here? The land just goes back to the state, doesn’t it? So instead of being controlled by the federal government it will be controlled by the state of Utah? So the people of Utah could turn the land into state parks?

"Federally controlled land" in the West is generally open to the public and is better referred to as public land. When land is given to the state, it is often no longer available for public access. The states use it as an additional source of revenue from leasing out mineral rights, agriculture use, etc. Their argument is federal land deprives them of property tax revenue. A counter argument is there is no cost to the state because the fed pays for infrastructure and there is no population on the land using state services. The state benefits from tourism dollars from hunters to hikers that use public land.

This is pitched as a political issue but only because so many are not informed, particularly those who live in the east and are not familiar with recreation options on public land. I wasn't not aware at all until I learned of boondocking and really until I moved to AZ and learned about hunting on public land.

This is an issue that is starting to unite folks from opposite ends of political spectrum. Hikers, mountain bikers, and hunters all have a shared interest in keeping public land open even if hikers and hunters have often disagreed. (Yes, it's possible to like both - I do. But the REI crowd and Cabellas crowd are generally a different demographic)

Checkerboard land is what needs to be fixed. That is when public land is surrounded by private land and the private land owners are not required to give passage including stepping across a corner boundary from one square of public land to another never stepping a foot on private land. Much of the checkerboard land is in elk hunting country and public land used by private outfitters who own adjacent private land.

Just as wild guess, but it may be possible that an act created in 1976 does not cover national parks, designated as such, after 1976... just those in existence at the time the act was signed.

Since the parks being reduced were declared national monuments by 42 and 44 (not so long ago) it is safe to assume the declaration and the reduction are both political.