Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

For the third time in less than five years an Interior secretary has visited southern Utah to try to grasp the significance of a landscape with a cultural heritage that reaches back thousands of years, one that also entombs paleontological remains millions of years old, in a bid to determine the appropriate size of two national monuments.

President Biden plans to have his Interior Department review boundary changes the Trump administration made to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, and its opening of commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyon and Seamounts National Monument off Cape Cod.

A congressman from Utah has introduced legislation to create a sixth national park out of remnants of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that President Trump, in a move being contested in court, broke into pieces and reduced in size.

Chaining, the practice of using heavy chains stretched between tractors or bulldozers to rip out vegetation, would be allowed in parts of Bears Ears National Monument under the Trump administration's proposed management plan. The plan, which also would allow new roads and utility lines to cross the landscape in southeastern Utah, drew immediate condemnation Friday from environmental and tribal groups, who are hoping their legal moves to reverse President Trump's redrawing of the monument's boundaries will prevent the plan from taking effect.