News: Grand Staircase-Escalante is Under Attack—Again

Late last month, Utah’s federal delegates (Senators Lee and Curtis, and Representatives Owens, Moore, Maloy, and Kennedy) announced their plan to introduce a bill under the Congressional Review Act to overturn the current Resource Management Plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The news comes in the wake of a decision by the Government Accountability Office to bring monument management plans under congressional review. 

Requiring a simple majority vote, if passed, “the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will be barred from issuing another plan that is ‘substantially the same’ in the future,” according to a press release from the Conservation Lands Foundation. 

Resource Management Plans are developed for many monuments to guide how public resources will be managed in the long term. The removal of the current Resource Management Plan creates great uncertainty about the future management of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It also negates a Resource Management Plan that was developed over several years through consultation with the Tribal Nations, local input, public, and scientists.

This would be the first time Congress has acted to nullify a monument’s management plan. 

— Morgan Sjogren