2/3 of voters in conservative-leaning Utah support restoring the national monuments Trump slashed

The Trump administration is facing a slew of major lawsuits over its cutback of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments to more than a quarter of their original size.

A new poll shows even in conservative-leaning Utah, two-thirds of voters support their restoration.

The poll was commissioned by the Grand Canyon Trust, and comes as the move is being challenged by lawsuits from conservation groups, environmental organizations and the outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which has taken a public stance against the move.

Wyatt Myskow wrote the story for Inside Climate News, and he joined The Show to talk about it.

Full conversation

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Wyatt.

WYATT MYSKOW: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for coming in. So, back up for us a moment and just describe Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. How big were these to begin with to be cut back so much?

WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, up until this July when two executive orders downsized these, these two monuments stretched over 3 million acres of public lands located in southern Utah. And they kind of formed this giant wildlife and conservation corridor that really stretches from Arches National Park over to Zion. Really, if you take that drive across southern Utah, it’s incredibly scenic. Red rock country, canyons everywhere you look, a very lush desert in the sense of colors, maybe not in plant life ... but gorgeous, gorgeous country.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, so that was all national monument. It was stripped back by the president significantly. And why? I mean, major mining interests have had a stake there, wanted to have a stake there for some time. Was that the president’s motivation?

WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, I’d say that extraction ultimately comes down to what the motivation was and what even President Trump said when he signed those executive orders. Grand Staircase-Escalante, for example, holds the last major coal deposit in the country. There’s been some interest in mining that. As soon as those monuments were rescinded, both — so this isn’t the first time these monuments have been rescinded. In the first Trump administration in 2017, they also downsized these monuments, not as drastically, but that led to lawsuits and obviously pushback as well.

That time, as soon as those protections were stripped back, small mining companies came in and staked claims to begin the process, in theory, of potentially mining in these areas. That has happened again, though not legally, because at the time those claims were staked, the monument still technically had their protections. The clock hadn’t ticked for those to go away yet. There’s also been a lot of interest from local ranchers in southern Utah who have ranched that area for a long time, that some of those monument protections were too strict for ranching. And so this removes, obviously, some of those restrictions. But yeah, it ultimately boils down to mining and ranching was the main goals here of downsizing these monuments.

LAUREN GILGER: Mining and ranching. And we should say under President Joe Biden, he restored these monuments after the first Trump administration. Now they’re stripped back again. Tell us more about this poll in Utah. Is this surprising? Two-thirds of voters want the monuments restored. Utah is a state that voted for Trump.

WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, it is, but I do think across the West, polling year after year has shown that even in red-leaning states, citizens like their public lands. It’s one of the few bipartisan issues in this country, is that people really don’t like the idea of taking national parks, national monuments, protected areas and stripping those back and opening them up for extractive purposes. It’s just not terribly popular stuff.

And so even in Utah, this decision to downsize both these monuments yet again has not been popular. It’s two-thirds of Utah voters don’t ... support this and think those protections should be gone back. That’s up to 95% of Democrats in the state in the poll, 77% of independents and 52% of Republicans. ... Still, even a majority for Republicans.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. There’s a stat in this poll: 81% of Utahns ... opposed selling public lands to private interests, which is something that Utah Republicans have advocated for, you report.

WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, for years, Sen. Mike Lee, Utah’s senator, has proposed essentially sell-offs of public lands, both in southern Utah, but elsewhere in the country. Republicans and Sen. Mike Lee have framed it kind of as a way to make more affordable housing in this country. That could maybe be a solution if it was done really right in very specific places.

But in places like this — like in Grand Staircase, Bears Ears — I mean, these are some of the last really remote places in this country. This last May, I drove through southern Utah and really spent some time there because we knew this was coming. This is not a surprise that these monuments were rescinded. And there really is nothing out there except wide open spaces. It’s not a place where affordable housing is going to go.

LAUREN GILGER: Trump’s executive order that scaled back these monuments also terminated the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal [Coalition]. The poll also found most people thought that was a bad idea. Talk a little bit about the importance of tribal voices in this region and in these monuments, Wyatt.

WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, Bears Ears was formed at the end of the Obama administration, and it was really led by local tribes in the area, the Navajo, Hopi, Ute Mountain, Ute, etc., to protect these lands. This is ancestral land for them. This is where a lot of archaeological sites are, important religious and cultural sites ... some of the folks who’ve advocated for these lands for a long time, this is their medicine cabinet. It’s their food source. It’s the place they call home. And so they pushed really hard to get that monument protected, and they got that.

Part of that led to it being, at least in the Bears Ears case, being co-managed by the local tribes, therefore the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. They were actually part in the resource management plan, which kind of guides how the monument is ran and protected. The tribes were part of that, and they had actual roles of protecting and incorporating those new rules in those planning documents. And so they were really integral for that monument, and also in Grand Staircase, too. A little bit less, for example, but still very important. Their voices ultimately were kind of the lead ones of getting these places protected.

They’ve been outraged about what has happened and calling ... these sites: "We were not consulted on these rollbacks and that we should have been." ... In the poll, 82% of Utah voters say it’s important for Native American tribes to have a role in the management of these lands, especially when they contain sacred and culturally significant sites like these ones do.

LAUREN GILGER: Such a huge number. OK, let me ask you lastly in the last minute or so here, Wyatt, about other monuments that environmentalists, conservationists are concerned about that could be under threat for similar kind of mining or ranching interests. Some of those are in Arizona.

WYATT MYSKOW: Yeah, that’s right. There are six national monuments that have been really targeted that environmentalists fear might be rolled back. Two were formed at the end of the Biden administration in California: Chuckwalla and Sattítla-Highlands national monuments. And then there’s two here in Arizona that have also gotten a ton of threats for years now: Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, this is just a little bit south of the Grand Canyon National Park, and then Ironwood Forest National Monument, which is just north of Tucson.

Both of those monuments have been — same reasons as Grand Staircase and Bears Ears, there’s mining interests. One of the few uranium mines operating in this country is actually currently operating in the ancestral footprints of the Grand Canyon. Right next to Ironwood Forest is ASARCO’s Silver Bell Mine. It’s one of the smaller copper mines here in Arizona. They would like to expand that mine. They’ve been wanting to expand that mine for years, but where they want to expand is currently national monument land. They can’t do that, they can’t expand there. And so they’ve been pushing for years to roll back some of those protections. ...

Yeah, I think it’s really important to note, these might seem distant, Grand Staircase, Bears Ears. But one, they’re only a six-hour drive for Arizonans, and they’re a great weekend trip if you want to go out there. But two, as you know, the environmental coalitions who have said filed lawsuits over these rollbacks is that ... an attack on one national monument is an attack on all of them.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so concerns are still there. Wyatt Myskow, Inside Climate News, joining us. Wyatt, thanks so much.

WYATT MYSKOW: Thank you.