August 10, 2023

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – This week, President Biden announced the creation of the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, which is the fifth national monument formed under his administration. This latest designation covers over 917,000 acres, making it the largest new national monument for a first-term president. 

The previous national monuments created by the Biden administration were:

• The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument (July 2023 – over 5 acres)
• The Avi Kwa Ame National Monument (March 2023 – over 506,000 acres)
• The Castner Range National Monument (March 2023 – over 6,600 acres)
• The Camp Hale — Continental Divide National Monument (October 2022 – around 53,800 acres)

The Utah Attorney General’s Office has actively opposed the Biden administration’s efforts. In 2022, General Reyes filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah against President Biden’s unlawful designation of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. The case argued that the size of the two national monuments, covering vast landscapes of a combined 3.2 million acres, violated the Antiquities Act of 1906, which limits U.S. presidents to creating monuments “confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” 

Both national monuments were created under the Clinton and Obama administrations, respectively. President Clinton designated approximately 1.7 million acres for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and President Obama reserved about 1.35 million acres. In 2017, Utah state legislators passed two resolutions to reflect their constituents’ frustration with the reservations, urging then-President Donald Trump to rescind the Bears Ears National Monument in full and to modify the boundaries of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. President Trump reduced the two reservations (a combined 1.11 million acres) later that year to allow for more targeted protection of specific sites and to revive the multiple-use approach in the remaining areas. 

However, in October 2021, President Biden issued two proclamations that substantially enlarged the borders of both National Monuments. Under the Biden administration’s new designations, the land included in the Bears Ears National Monument was 1.36 million acres, and the land included in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was 1.87 acres. Combined, the 3.23 million acres of land encompassed by the reservations were twice as large as Delaware, four times larger than Rhode Island, and just shy of the size of Connecticut.  

In his lawsuit, General Reyes argued that these public lands and sacred sites are a stewardship that no one in Utah takes lightly. The archaeological, paleontological, religious, recreational, and geologic values must be harmonized and safeguarded while protecting access to minerals critical to modern technology. The Utah Attorney General’s Office, and other state and local leaders, believe President Biden’s unlawful designations place all of these values at increased risk without providing the tools necessary to conserve and protect these resources adequately. The Utah Attorney General’s Office asserts that Congress is the appropriate place to bring residents, tribes, leaders, and interests together to evaluate how best to protect America’s public lands. 

Additionally, General Reyes recently joined two comment letters to the Bureau of Land Management opposing its proposed “Conservation and Landscape Health” rule on the grounds that the new policies would be “bad policy, unlawful, and would inflict immediate injuries on State, public, and small business interests.” Ben Burr, the Executive Director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, stated that this rule would essentially “sell off public lands to environmental groups who schemed up the 30 x 30 agenda,” which is an attempt to “justify locking up 30% of the nation’s lands and waters by 2023.”