What's Up with this Monumental Delay?

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has recommended that three national monuments drastically impacted by the Trump administration—Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts—be fully restored to their previous size and protection status.

But the Biden Administration has failed to act so far.

It's time to end the delays and give these national monuments the protection they need before it's too late!

  • Bears Ears National Monument: Five tribal nations came together to urge President Barack Obama to protect their sacred ancestral lands in southeast Utah. President Obama took heed and created the monument in 2016. Originally over 1.3 million acres, the monument protected an incredible high desert landscape and rich Indigenous cultural history. But the Trump administration removed over a million acres from the monument, leaving a vast landscape unprotected from coal and natural gas exploitation.

  • Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument: Created in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, this astonishing desert and mountain landscape in southern Utah was shrunk by the Trump administration from its original 1.8 million acres down to roughly 1 million acres, and is now threatened by oil and gas development and mining as well.

  • Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument: Located about 130 miles off of Cape Cod in the Atlantic Ocean and created to protect countless endangered fish and marine species, this monument was opened up to commercial fishing by President Trump in 2020.