Trouble In Utah
2026
Once again, federal land many of us would like to see safeguarded has been stripped of protection.
In Utah, The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and The Bears Ears National Monument are each suddenly a shadow of what they once were.
More than 90% of the acreage of these two National Monuments are no longer protected. Recent Presidential proclamations set the stage for copper and uranium mining.
The ironies…
Polling indicates this is not what the people of Utah want, so the rallying cry of “local control” rings hollow.
And…
Uranium miners don’t need to work The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and The Bears Ears National Monument.
They have their hands full right now with other projects, notably Uranium Energy’s Willow Creek project in Wyoming and the Hobson processing facility in Texas. There’s also the Ur-Energy Lost Creek ISR project in Wyoming. America is not in dire strategic need of uranium supplies.
So why did this assault on Utah’s National Monuments take place?
Who knows? We can probably chalk it up to political posturing.
We wonder, what did Utah Governor Spencer Cox actually mean when he said…
“This does not remove the other protections that already exist in those areas, just making the monuments more manageable so that we have the resources necessary to continue to protect these antiquities.”
Did Governor Cox say bring in the miners so their permitting fees pay for the management of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, or did he infer something altogether different?
Once again, we’re all tugged back into a divided America, a shame, because there should be no question about our duty to protect our magnificent land.
But sadly, there is.
The White House 2027 budget proposal for The National Park Service calls for a $736 million cut in funding park operations.
That’s a 25% reduction.
For the land we treasure, in Utah and beyond, these are not good times, and there’s no good reason for this.
No matter how we lean politically, our National Parks and our National Monuments give us a way to refresh, to admire nature and together, to experience America’s grandeur.
