The future of a Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is up in the air.
Sen. Mike Lee formally kicked off a process that could throw out the management plan for the monument that spans 1.9 million acres of red rock country between Utah’s popular national parks.
The Utah Republican entered into the Congressional Record on Wednesday a Government Accountability Office opinion that said the Utah monument’s management plan is considered a “rule” under the act. Deeming the management plan as a rule means it must undergo congressional review, marking the first time a monument management plan has received such scrutiny.
This Government Accountability Office’s opinion came in January after Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, sent a letter to the head of the office in July asking them to weigh in on whether or not the plan counts as a rule under the act.
Now that Lee has added the opinion to the record, a member of Congress may issue a “resolution of disapproval” of the monument’s management plan, which would then go to a vote. If a majority of both chambers of Congress supports the resolution, the agency must throw out the plan and create a new one that is not “substantially the same,” according to the act.
Before last year, the Congressional Review Act had not been used to slash land management plans, Steve Bloch, legal director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, told The Tribune.
“We don’t have a track record for what happens,” he added. “We know that this really is the nuclear option that Congress is using to dismantle the system of federal public land management.”
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has been at the heart of public land debates for years. President Donald Trump reduced the monument by nearly half during his first term. The Biden administration returned the monument to its original boundaries in 2021 before finalizing a new plan in 2025.
“This plan reflects years of public input, scientific research, and meaningful Tribal consultation,” Autumn Gillard, Southern Paiute and member of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition, said in a statement last month, “and dismantling it through procedural shortcuts undermines good governance, responsible land stewardship, and the protection of irreplaceable cultural landscapes.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Autumn Gillard of the Piute Indian Tribe of Utah speaks during a rally to protect public lands at the Utah Capitol on Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025.
Utah leaders have long opposed the monument, though, and shrinking its boundaries has been listed as a priority of Utah legislators in the current legislative session.
Maloy said in a statement last month that the Biden-era plan “is fundamentally incompatible with state and local goals for wildlife management, grazing, recreation, and economic development.”
“I am working to return the monument’s management plan to its previous framework, one that balances conservation with access and reflects the needs and voices of the people who live and work on this land,” she added.
‘Uncharted waters’
It’s not clear how the Utah congressional delegation will accomplish its goals to revert the monument’s management to the previous Trump framework.
“This is truly uncharted waters that Senator Lee and Representative Maloy are taking us into over how one of the most fantastic landscapes in America is going to be managed in the future,” Bloch said. “That sounds very apocalyptic, but I think we’re at that point.”
Slashing the current management plan won’t automatically revert the monument’s management to the previous Trump plan, Bloch said. The agency could choose to adopt that as its new monument plan, but that could spark confusion over how to manage the monument since that plan was in place when the monument was half its size.
“Legal requirement to manage the monument according to the monument proclamation and multiple federal laws will remain,” John Ruple, research professor at the University of Utah College of Law, told The Tribune. “Those requirements won’t disappear if the management plan is repealed.”
Officially shrinking the monument again would require another action from President Trump or Congress.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) A sign welcomes visitors to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument near Tropic on Monday, Dec. 16, 2024.
What’s next
Environmental groups anticipate a member of the Utah delegation will introduce a resolution of disapproval in the coming days. Once that’s introduced, Congress has 60 days to pass the resolution by a simple majority vote.
“We’re obviously going to fight,” Bloch said. “We think we’re going to win that fight.”
That fight will involve convincing members of Congress that they should vote no on the resolution, Bloch added, “and should stand up for the protection of this place.”