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JAKARTA, Indonesia - The closest most people will ever get to remote Papua, or the operations of Freeport-McMoRan, is a computer tour using Google Earth to swoop down over the rain forests and glacier-capped mountains where the American company mines the world's largest gold reserve. With a few taps on a keyboard, satellite images quickly reveal the deepening spiral that Freeport has bored out of its Grasberg mine as it pursues a virtually bottomless store of gold hidden inside. They also show a spreading soot-colored bruise of almost a billion tons of mine waste that the New Orleans-based company has...

Interior secretary nominee Ryan Zinke served his country honorably as a Navy SEAL, but in affirming that he would refuse to loosen the federal government’s chokehold on America’s land, he did the U.S. a great disservice. Reasonable people can disagree about how much territory the government should own. As an avid outdoorsman, I’m sympathetic to the conservation ideal. Zinke should know, however, that federal land ownership is often at war with that ideal. There is no reasonable excuse for the federal bureaucracy to control a whopping half of the American West, nearly 30 percent of the nation, and over 60...

"Any perceived benefits from the designation of huge landscape monuments need to be weighed against the impacts suffered by those who have traditionally used the lands," Kathleen Clarke, the former Bureau of Land Management director and now head of the Utah Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office, told a House Natural Resources subcommittee. "Landscapes don't disappear, but jobs and artifacts do." {snip} The testimony comes as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, as ordered by President Donald Trump, is reviewing the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase designations and other national monuments named in the past 21 years. Zinke must report back recommendations by...

BLANDING, Utah (AP) -- Laminated sheets of paper held in place by rocks rest inside ancient cliff dwellings nestled underneath a spectacular red rock overhang in southeastern Utah. "Don't erase the traces of America's past," the signs read. "Please do not enter interior rooms." The weathered signs and a similar warning at the trailhead are the only protections in place for these easily accessible ruins along a canyon hiking path. -snip- Opponents agree the area is a natural treasure worth preserving but fear a federal designation would create restrictions on oil and gas development as well residents' ability to camp,...

This past Monday marked the 20th anniversary of President Bill Clinton using the Antiquities Act to create the 1.5 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. For most Utahns, this date is not a cause for celebration. It’s a source of anger toward what many see as an out-of-touch and overbearing federal government Infamously, the Clinton administration failed to notify the people of Utah prior to announcing the monument designation—probably because the administration knew that nearly everyone in the state was opposed to the idea. Utah’s congressional delegation, state and county leaders, and local residents all warned that a...

Navajo Nation locals joined Utah lawmakers Sept. 21 to express opposition to any attempt to designate land around the Bears Ears site in southeastern Utah as a national monument. The Navajo residents of San Juan County, Utah, joined their elected officials who said the decision on the 1.9-million acre site, which is sacred to the Navajo people, should be left in local hands. “We have managed to protect this enchanted place, and we will continue to do so,” Susie Philemon said. ... Lewis Singer, a Navajo from San Juan County, said monument status would restrict access of Native people to...

A new legal analysis concludes that President Trump could undo the Bears Ears National Monument. The analysis from the Pacific Legal Foundation finds that a president can revoke a national monument if they determine the areas under protection are "illegally large." The analysis was conducted by Todd Gaziano and John Yoo. From E&E News: Yoo and Gaziano argue, however, that even if a president does not have a "general discretionary revocation power," Trump could seek to revoke monuments by declaring them overly large. "The Congress that enacted the Antiquities Act did not intend monuments of that size to be established...

The Trump administration is launching its four-month review of 27 large national monuments designated since 1996 under the Antiquities Act, including two controversial monuments in Utah. That review formally kicks off this weekend with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's arrival in Utah to investigate Bears Ears National Monument, designated by President Barack Obama just a few weeks before he left office, and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. At the urging of Utah's political leaders, President Donald Trump ordered the review April 26, when he called out Bears Ears as a "land grab" that should not have happened.

In a report Zinke submitted to the White House, the secretary recommended reducing the size of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, as well as Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, according to multiple individuals briefed on the decision. President Bill Clinton declared the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996, while President Barack Obama designated the 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears last year. Cascade-Siskiyou, which now encompasses more than 113,000 acres, was established by Clinton shortly before leaving office and expanded by Obama in January.

SALT LAKE CITY — President Trump is expected to announce a historic reduction to Bears Ears National Monument on Monday, a sprawling region of red rock canyons in Utah that has been at the center of a national fight over how much land a president can legally set aside for protection. The Trump administration plans to announce that he will shrink the monument by between 77 and 92 percent, according to statements from the office of Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah. It would be the largest reduction of a national monument to date, and it comes as the administration...

During a speech Monday, the president said he is signing two proclamations which will shrink the Bears Ears National Monument and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. He called the measures a reversal of federal overreach, and says the move will restore the rights of land to the people of Utah. The president says the residents of the state know how to protect and conserve their own land, and Washington politicians do not. He added, lands must be protected and now will be protected by this new measure.

The President Stole Your Land In an illegal move, the president just reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. This is the largest elimination of protected land in American history.

Trump won the state of Utah in the 2016 election. He smoked Hillary Clinton by 18 points. He was able to earn those 6 electoral votes despite the fact that Evan McMullin was on the ballot as a third-party challenger. It was widely reported that the Mormon community, which McMullin is a part of, would side with Mitt Romney’s condemnation of Trump. Clearly, that wasn’t correct. Apparently, Utah is Trump country. Don’t take my word for it. Look what happened when the president showed up to Utah on Monday.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, wants the names and other redacted information revealed in an ethics probe of the Bureau of Land Management law enforcement supervisory agent once in charge of Utah and Nevada. Details of the more than yearlong probe by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General were released in a February report, but key names were blacked out — including that of Dan Love, who the Deseret News confirmed was at the center of the probe. In the report, the inspector general substantiated that ethics breaches had occurred and ... Bishop asked for the full report by no...

How many decisive rejections can a veteran national political figure experience at the hands of voters before that politician takes the hint and walks off into the sunset with some small measure of dignity still intact?Willard “Mitt” Romney seems intent on testing the limits of that proposition by floating the story with friends in the conservative media that he’s toying with the idea of running for the U.S. Senate seat of octogenarian Orrin Hatch of Utah, who is expected to announce his decision to decline a run for yet another term next year. Evidently, Romney’s last electoral humiliation—the embarrassing rout...

Former Navy SEAL and current Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke delivers brief remarks at the Capitol Building in Utah. Prior to President Trump signing a national monument proclamation, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told a packed-house crowd the Antiquities Act, an obscure law that Barack Obama used to broaden federal monuments in Utah, ‘was never meant to prevent. It was meant to protect.’ “Our public land is for the public to use,” Zinke said.

On Monday, President Trump announced his plan to shrink Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent, while also cutting Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by half, a move that could open up Utah to more oil and gas drilling. More than 90 percent of the Bears Ears territory is thought to overlap with oil, gas and coal reserves, according to Bloomberg. Last year, EOG Resources, a prominent shale producer that is well-known in other shale basins, such as the Permian, is one of the few companies chomping at the bit in Utah. Last year, the shale driller won an approval from...

The shrinking in size of two national monuments in Utah by President Trump through executive order was a long overdue rebuke to federal land grabs that have given federal control to vast swaths of American land, particularly in the West. As the New York Times noted in 2016: The United States government owns 47 percent of all land in the West. In some states, including Oregon, Utah and Nevada, the majority of land is owned by the federal government. Of course, it used to own nearly all of it... East of the Mississippi…the federal government owns only 4 percent of...

Local voices and tribal members were effusive in their praise for twin proclamations from President Donald Trump ordering the reduction of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments on Monday. They described the announcement as a locals-driven decision-making process that culminated in the monument revisions. San Juan County Commissioner Rebecca Benally, a member of the Navajo Nation and a Democrat thanked President Trump and Secretary Zinke for the decision. “Thank you Secretary [Ryan] Zinke for coming to San Juan, Kane, and Garfield counties and listening to the local grassroots people. Your boots on the ground approach was unexpected, but well...

Acting on recommendations by Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, on December 4 President Trump significantly reduced the size of two enormous areas in Utah that Presidents Clinton and Obama had set aside as limited-access, no-development zones under the 1906 Antiquities Act. Mr. Trump’s action reduced the Grand Staircase Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments from a combined 3.2 million acres (the size of Connecticut) to 1.2 million acres (slightly smaller than Delaware). Utah residents and elected officials applauded the move as long overdue. The Patagonia and North Face outdoor apparel companies, environmentalist groups, and various liberal politicians and...