This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Washington • President Barack Obama has used his authority to preserve more land and water than any other president, and the White House says it still has "big ambitions" in the final year of his presidency.
That could mean action on the proposed 1.9-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, a move that Utah's six members of Congress urged Obama against Friday as the president designated three new national monuments covering 1.8 million acres of the California desert.
These monuments are on top of 260 million acres of land and water Obama has already preserved using his unilateral power under the 1906 Antiquities Act.
"We have big, big ambitions this year, so let's see what happens," Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told The Washington Post.
Goldfuss told the paper that the administration is focused on "local requests for action. It's really been driven by activities on the ground," and added that the two main criteria the White House weighs regarding new monuments are that protection should help tamp down climate change or sites that are "connected to people and communities that have not been historically represented" in national parks and other federal sites.
Several American Indian tribes have joined together to form the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which has urged Obama to use his authority to name the monument in southeastern Utah, arguing that it would protect cultural and historic sites.
"Bears Ears offers something unique that we can't find anyplace else in the world," Eric Descheenie, the group's co-chairman, said recently at a news conference. "The threat of looting, grave robbing and mineral leasing, to name a few — the list is extensive — we've already seen it in and around these lands. If this is something we lose, we lose it forever."
Utah's federal delegation, however, is lockstep opposed to a new monument designation and wrote to Obama on Friday, saying a locally driven approach called the Public Lands Initiative would be a better way to protect sensitive areas and would not exacerbate the already divisive issues over federal land management.
"Use of the Antiquities Act within [Utah] will be met with fierce local opposition and will further polarize federal land-use discussions for years, if not decades," the members said in the letter.
"Make no mistake, both the state of Utah and San Juan County value our public lands. With that said, public participation in land-use decisions is critical to their long-term acceptance and success; the most effective land-management policy is inclusive and engaging, not veiled and unilateral."
Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, along with Reps. Rob Bishop, Jason Chaffetz, Mia Love and Chris Stewart, signed the letter; all are Republicans.
The delegation says in its letter that it supports conserving 1.2 million acres of federal land in San Juan County, including sites important to American Indian tribes, but that effort should come from the community and state leaders.
"We are prepared to work with the administration to get this proposal signed into law," the delegation wrote.
Bishop and Chaffetz have been working on the Public Lands Initiative for several years and unveiled the legislation in January.
The proposal was immediately decried by some conservation groups, the Ute Indian Tribe and Democrats as a "land grab" lopsidedly favoring development.