The answer is simple and stark: more mining, drilling, logging, livestock grazing, and development of our public spaces for private gain. Senator Lee characterizes his second bill as a "new Homestead Act" that allows states, local governments, and even individuals to petition the federal government to take ownership of public lands for "affordable housing, or education, or health care, or research." Lee’s radical approach promises plenty of room for "affordable" cabins for well-connected donors in prime settings on now-public lands.Īs if these two bills weren’t enough, Lee’s third bill is the wildest pitch of the game - it would transfer all federal public lands (save for national parks, national monuments, and designated wilderness) to the states, removing the American public from public lands.īy now you must be wondering why there is such ardor in some Utah circles to strip protective status from public lands. But Congress can already create national monuments, so the bill is really just a prohibition on presidents acting in Utah when there is a need to protect important places and Congress can’t get its act together to pass legislation. The first bill, speciously dubbed the "Protect Utah's Rural Economy Act," would exempt Utah from new national monument designations made by future presidents under the Antiquities Act unless the Utah State Legislature and the U.S. Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, is one of those politicians, and he’s proposed a trio of bills that would go much further than just ravaging national monuments. The enormous reductions in the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments (85 and 47 percent, respectively) were not enough for some Utah politicians, particularly those who called for their total elimination. They also neglect to mention that the scenes enjoyed by happy families on the "Road to Mighty" contain places that the state of Utah actually wishes weren’t national monuments - places in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase that the president tried to strip of national monument protections in December 2017 at the behest of some of Utah’s elected officials. The ads don’t mention that four of Utah’s Mighty Five - Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, and Capitol Reef - began as presidentially proclaimed national monuments just like Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears. Utah’s well-financed ad campaign seeks to lure you to drop some vacation cash on a trip to the "Mighty Five" national parks, and on the "Road to Mighty," Utah’s national monuments between the parks. Southern Utah seems to be everywhere you look these days - red-rock adventures advertised in airports, on the web, and on cable TV. What you need to know about new mining claims staked in Utah's national monuments. White Mesa Cultural and Conservation Area.
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