Too Open for Business? Strengthening Long-Term Protections for Federal Lands

Abstract

In 2016, President Obama, using his authority under the Antiquities Act, designated 1.35 million acres of federal land in southeast Utah a National Monument. This land became known as Bears Ears National Monument. Bears Ears featured classic Southwestern landscapes, including pristine sandstone canyons, mesas, ancient human dwellings, and artifacts with tribal significance. Five tribes, the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Northern Ute, and Ute Mountain, have significant cultural ties to the land. In the words of Malcolm Lehi, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, “[a]t Bears Ears we can hear the voices of our ancestors in every canyon and on every mesa top.” Native American tribes applauded the Bears Ears National Monument designation, believing that the action would protect these resources from the increasing pressure for resource extraction and other exploitative activities.

Unfortunately, shortly after President Trump took office in early 2017, he directed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review national monument designations with an eye toward fostering more development on these federal lands. In December of that year, President Trump then announced plans to reduce the size of Bears Ears National Monument. Trump’s administration ultimately reduced the size of Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent. No longer designated a national monument area, these excluded lands and resources once again became vulnerable to private exploitation. Less than two years after President Obama had protected them under a national monument designation, a new president had reopened the lands for business and once again placed their long-term security in serious doubt. This dramatic reversal begs a critical question: how could federal laws be restructured to better protect precious public lands resources against the short-sighted whims of powerful politicians and the corporations who support them?

Keywords: Public land, Resource economics, Conservation policy, Environmental management, Regulatory theory, Forests