The next monument on the block
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
The same order moves to shrink Grand Staircase-Escalante, reopening the Kaiparowits Plateau, one of the largest untouched coal deposits in the country, to leasing. Nearly 1.9 million acres of canyon, bench, and fossil country hang on it.
Grand Staircase-Escalante protects nearly 1.9 million acres of canyon, plateau, and some of the richest fossil beds in North America, where paleontologists have pulled up more than two dozen species new to science. President Clinton designated it in 1996. In 2017 the first Trump administration cut it roughly in half, the new lines drawn to release the Kaiparowits Plateau, one of the largest untapped coal deposits in the country. President Biden restored the boundaries in 2021. Now the administration has moved to shrink it again.
The lines are not random. They trace coal. Reopening the Kaiparowits to leasing is the point of the reduction, and the same seams that past mine proposals could never make pencil out are back on the table.
The proclamation takes no public comment. What does is the Bureau of Land Management's new management plan for the released land, a process built on public comment that agencies are legally required to answer. That is where your voice lands. Leave your email and we send you to the comment page the moment it opens.
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