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\n\tGrand Staircase\u2013Escalante, a national monument in Utah that is host to rock art dating back multiple millennia, will be significantly decreased in scale by Donald Trump as his administration attempts to capitalize on resources on the site\u2019s land.<\/p>\n
\n\tEstablished in 1996 at a scale of 1.7 million acres, Grand Staircase\u2013Escalante has contracted and expanded in size depending on which president is in power. In 2017, Trump cut it in half; in 2021, Joe Biden expanded it once more.<\/p>\n
\n\tThough today controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, Grand Staircase\u2013Escalante is the homeland of an array of Native American tribes, including the Hopi, the Navajo, and the Ute Nation of Utah.<\/p>\n
\n\tConservative politicians have claimed that the archaeological significance of the site must be squared with the business potential of its resources. In a 2021 lawsuit against the Biden administration, Utah senators claimed that his expansion \u201cdraws unmanageable visitation levels to these lands without providing any of the tools necessary to adequately conserve and protect these resources.\u201d The lawsuit was dismissed in 2023, with a judge saying that the Antiquities Act gave the sitting president the right to name and control national monuments. <\/p>\n
\n\tA proclamation from Trump on Monday echoed some claims in that lawsuit, suggesting that cutting down the scale of Grand Staircase\u2013Escalante would \u201cbetter align the use of these public lands with the public interest.\u201d Trump\u2019s proclamation invoked the Antiquities Act as well.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe Grand Staircase-Escalante region contains several resources that are vital to our economic and national security,\u201d the proclamation said. \u201cThese resources include several critical minerals, such as chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, silver, thorium, titanium, uranium, vanadium, zinc, and zirconium, create jobs, fuel prosperity, and are essential to important sectors of the economy of the United States, including defense, manufacturing, and transportation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe proclamation continues, \u201cIt is imperative that the United States not be dependent on foreign sources of these resources. Modifying the Monument\u2019s boundaries will help ensure that adequate domestic supplies exist, thereby reducing the threat posed by our Nation\u2019s reliance on foreign sources.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAlso downsized was Bears Ears, a national monument in Utah created by Barack Obama in 2016.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2248767662.jpg?w=1024″] Grand Staircase\u2013Escalante, a national monument in Utah that is host to rock art dating back multiple millennia, will be significantly decreased in scale by Donald Trump as his administration attempts to capitalize on resources on the site\u2019s land. Established in 1996 at a scale of 1.7 million acres, Grand Staircase\u2013Escalante has contracted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2043368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2043368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2043368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2043368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2043368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}