President Joe Biden will restore three national monuments that were cut by the former President Donald Trump in 2017. Trump administration had stripped environmental protections for the two sprawling national monuments in Utah and a separate marine conservation area in New England.
The two national monuments in Utah have been at the center of a long-running public land dispute and the one in New England has been used for commercial fishing. The changes were announced on Thursday night by the White House.
Spencer James Cox, the Republican governor of Utah expressed his disappointment in the President’s decision to restore Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments which were downsized by Trump administration.
Most of the lands slashed by Trump administration were considered sacred to the Native American communities on Bears Ears. Both the monuments were created at the times of different Democratic presidents.
A vast area of southern Utah is covered by these monuments where petroglyphs and cliff dwellings were discovered in the red rocks. Two million acres were cut from the monuments area by invoking the century-old Antiquities Act by Trump.
The reform in the act was in order to lift restrictions on mining and other energy production in the area. Trump described the restrictions on mining, a ‘massive land grab’ which should have never happened’.
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