How Utah Republicans are undoing the Grand Staircase-Escalante management plan

The Utah congressional delegation took steps this week to overturn the current Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument management plan under the Congressional Review Act.

Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced a “resolution of disapproval” in their respective houses of Congress which will trigger a vote to change how the monument is managed.

“Grand Staircase-Escalante is worthy of protection. It’s one of the last places that still feels truly untouched by modern life. But its future cannot be dictated by distant officials who will never bear the costs of their decisions,” Lee wrote in an op-ed for the Deseret News.

“The Congressional Review Act exists for moments like this. When agencies impose rules with generational consequences without the consent of the American people or their representatives, Congress has the authority and the responsibility to review them and ensure that the people are not simply presented with a fait accompli.”

Critics, however, see the CRA as a heavy-handed way of legislating. Passed in 1996, the somewhat obscure law gives Congress oversight over rules implemented by various federal agencies, such as the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, and the ability to overturn them. The law requires that all rules to which it applies be submitted prior to being enacted and, if the CRA is successfully used, prevents new rules that are substantially similar to the overturned ones from ever being implemented again.

With resource management plans, there already are several existing pathways to alter or change them that don’t require congressional oversight. They’re implemented often. As such, applying the CRA to land-use plans — something that necessitated a novel approval from the Government Accountability Office as those plans aren’t generally submitted at all — was unprecedented until last fall, when Congress passed bills overturning established plans in Alaska, Montana and North Dakota.

Legal scholars and former Republican BLM director candidates called such applications of the law “nuclear,” “using a chainsaw to perform surgery” and potentially creating a “Wild West” of land-use planning.

Those concerns stem from the unclear implications of the legalese in the review act. Once passed, does the BLM revert to prior land-use plans? That is what Maloy said was her goal in a statement to Deseret News earlier this year. But even if it’s clear that the BLM cannot use old plans, there’s no language stipulating exactly what it should do if they’re overturned.

Another lingering concern is whether the use of the CRA on management plans question the legality of all land-use plans currently enacted. Only four have been reviewed, so there’s not yet a clear precedent.

Those legal uncertainties are in addition to the passionate concerns that conservationists and local stakeholders have regarding changes to what Steve Bloch, legal director and attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, called the “crown jewel of America’s system of federal public lands,” referring to Grand Staircase-Escalante.

Not least of which is that the prior management plan was written for a monument 900,000 acres smaller than it is today.

Even so, the Utah delegation is clear that change is necessary and that the CRA is the best way to do it. Congress now has 60 legislative days to vote on the resolution of disapproval. Such legislation requires a simple majority in the Senate. Last year, the three prior CRA resolutions passed. The resolution does not eliminate or change the size of monument.

Why Utah leaders want a new management plan

In a joint press release, Utah’s all-Republican congressional delegation argued for overturning Grand Staircase-Escalante’s current management plan, which is technically called a “monument management plan” due to its protected status.

Their broad arguments against the 2025 plan are that its process did not properly consider local and state input. They suggest that it was imposed by the federal government during the Biden administration.

“Our lands are best managed and most appreciated by those who live closest to them. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s overreaching management plan for the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument clearly does not reflect the full spectrum of voices who live and work in the area,” said Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah. “This resolution will help ensure that future management plans better serve the long-term interests of Utahns, not distant federal agencies.”

When the management plan was being considered, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s office sent a letter to the BLM pointing out a series of issues it thought were not resolved. The letter expressed appreciation for state input the BLM did include, but frustration that much of it was excluded. The BLM failed to protect Utah’s “access to public roads, existing and potential mining claims, grazing rights, private property rights, etc,” according to the letter.

Not getting everything that you want is not the same as not listening.

—  Steve Bloch, the legal director and attorney for Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

Another complaint that Utah’s legislators alluded to is that the current plan is too restrictive for the communities that recreate and rely on the monument. That same letter detailed some of those restrictions, such as prioritizing conservation over mineral extraction with sustained yields, as well as limitations on grazing. For recreation, it addressed off-highway vehicles, motorized recreation and permitted dispersed camping.

In Kane County, one of two counties the monument straddles, commissioners see the potential for some of the points the Utah delegation took umbrage with to be addressed.

“With our county being engulfed by 80% monument, the crushing restrictions of the 2025 rules severely impact local families and business owners,” the Kane County Commission wrote in a statement. “We are overjoyed to hear of these efforts to return power to our duly elected federal delegation.”

Creation of Grand Staircase-Escalante still an issue

The 2025 Grand Staircase-Escalante management plan was based on a 2000 plan that was in place for the majority of the monument’s existence. It did not change until the first Trump administration cut the footprint of the monument in half. That action addressed an underlying issue some Utahns and GOP legislators have with the monument itself.

“Almost 30 years ago, in Arizona and with his back turned to Utah, President Clinton abused the Antiquities Act that locked up millions of acres of Utah,” Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, said in a statement. “Then again, thousands of miles away in a last-ditch effort to enshrine a failed legacy of an awful president, this overreaching rule was issued in both instances these sweeping decisions framed as ‘environmental victories’ sidelined the voices of southern Utah.”

The creation of the monument itself is at issue and once those foundations were questioned, Bloch said he thinks the Utah delegation found an opportunity to address that underlying ideological problem.

“The real driver here is Utah politicians wanting to be the ones who call the shots on this most magnificent landscape of federal public lands in Utah,” he said.

To be clear, no one is voting to dynamite Bryce Canyon. No one is proposing to pave Zion. The question is whether a Biden-era management plan, issued without proper submission to Congress and loaded with restrictions that local communities will live under for generations, should be treated as untouchable.

—  Sen. Mike Lee, R-UT, in an oped published by Deseret News.

Whose voices were included in the plan?

Bloch pointed out members of the Utah delegation said in their statements that locals were not involved or listened to. He said that’s not true.

“The Biden era planning process had dozens if not hundreds of meetings with local stakeholders from the counties to local utilities, to ranchers and grazers, to special permit holders, and reflected their input,” Bloch said.

“It also reflected the fact that these are federal public lands managed on behalf of all Americans, not just Utahns and not just local residents in Kane and Garfield counties. Those voices are important and they were listened to. Not getting everything that you want is not the same as not listening.”

The last management plan did include public comment from local stakeholders. There were at least 1,600 individual responses considered, some 34 public hearings and the input of several tribal nations with ties to the land.

If overturned, the input from the tribes will be carved out of an agreement with the federal government that reflects two years of work, engagement and recognition.

The view from a Native American

“The co-stewardship provisions developed with tribal nations could be permanently blocked, and that is not a minor administrative change. That is like a sweeping rollback with long-term consequences,” said Davina Smith-Idjesa, co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and board member of Grand Staircase-Escalante Partners.

Smith-Idjesa, who is Navajo, referred to the lands as “living cultural landscapes.”

“Our connection did not begin in 2025, it did not begin at 1996. It predates statehood and federal designation,” she said. “Overturning this RMP will signal that native voices can be included in conversation but excluded from durable outcomes. That is erasure in modern form.”

None of which changes Utah elected officials’ frustration that their issues were not more heavily integrated into the plan. Their messaging, whether on the federal or state level, has remained the same.

“This is the right move by our federal delegation,” Cox said in a statement. “The Biden administration advanced a rigid, top-down plan without coordinating with the state, putting livestock grazing, public access, recreation, and rural Utah’s economy at risk. Rural Utahns deserve a seat at the table when decisions like this are made.”

Will the monument be left without direction?

John Ruple, a research professor at the University of Utah law school, questions how Utah is going about undoing land-use plans.

“One of the biggest frustrations with the Congressional Review Act is that the problem is not identified well and there is a massive gap between what appears to be the perceived problem and the tool that Congress is using to address it,” he said.

“It’s using a chainsaw to perform surgery. We need a scalpel, not a chainsaw. We need to fix the problem, not eviscerate the patient.”

Ruple said he has been disappointed with the use of the CRA in general since the idea was introduced last year. At that time, he and a coalition of legal scholars from around the country sent the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee a letter urging it to not consider the law at all.

“While we take no position on the substantive provisions in the plans at issue, we strongly urge Congress to avoid the harmful precedent and unintended policy consequences of invalidating RMPs or forest plans through the CRA,” read the letter.

“Hundreds of federal land management plans nationwide may be implicated. The resulting uncertainty could trigger an endless cycle of litigation, effectively freezing the ability of the BLM and other agencies to manage public lands for years, if not decades to come.”

Ruple finds what’s happening to Grand Staircase-Escalante especially troubling.

“It means that years of scientific study that went into the 2025 monument management plan are going to be ignored. It means the years of stakeholder engagement that went into that updated plan are effectively shredded,” he said.

“It means that half the monument is now going to be left without legally required management direction. It means that managers are going to face increased risk, increased uncertainty, and that’s going to slow down their ability to manage resources on the ground. It increases the risk of litigation and in the end, the resources are going to suffer. Nobody is better off because of this.”

Regarding what the law stipulates for next steps, Ruple said it is not clear.

Once the CRA is applied, Biden’s 2021 monument designation proclamation — a legally binding document — will still be in full effect. It is clear that the landscape needs to be managed as a “unit of the National Landscape Conservation System,” with preservation as a priority.

Even if the 2025 monument management plan is undone, the BLM will still need to protect the resource as was written in the 2021 law. That will be difficult for land managers.

“The mandate stays the same, but the instructions are going away,” Ruple said. “We’re asking people to make management decisions across a multi-million acre landscape, and we’re shredding the instructions.”

Ruple said that “the CRA makes good headlines, but it makes bad government.”

And some headlines and actions have shown the Utah delegation’s resolve in ensuring that some of their constituents’ voices have more control over the monument than they had in the past. Admirable and fair as that effort is, Bloch said it misunderstands the national nature of public lands.

“It is this misperception that these lands are theirs and they need to be the ones who drive the management, and just really fundamentally not accepting that these are federal public lands,” Bloch said. ”This isn’t a county park.”