Federal authorities at Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument are moving forward to create new plans for managing the area, despite several legal challenges to the monument’s boundaries. Conservationists say they are concerned about a rush to create new plans before the courts weigh in on the boundaries. Legal experts say Trump’s reduction of the monuments is unlikely to survive scrutiny in the courts. Nevertheless, the BLM appears to be moving ahead with management plans on an expedited timeframe. At Grand Staircase, three of the BLM’s new plans correspond to Trump’s new units, called Kaiparowits, Grand Staircase and Escalante Canyon. A fourth plan will cover BLM acreage that had been a part of the Clinton designation and was removed from the monument. The Bureau of Land Management began accepting public comments in January related to the new plans; after public comment closes, the agency will produce draft plans. The public will have a chance to weigh in on those plans, once complete. When board members of Grand Staircase Escalante Partners met with BLM Associate Monument Manager Matt Betenson in Kanab, Utah, on Feb. 16, they asked him why the BLM did not postpone the planning process until after lawsuits had played out, according to interviews with multiple people present at the meeting. “Basically his response was something very similar to, ‘Well that’s what we’ve been told to do and so we’re going to do it,’” Noel Poe, a Partners board member and former national park superintendent told High Country News. “And we got the impression that that was coming from the Department of Interior down to the BLM and down to the monument level.”...more
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