Modifying the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Record date: 2026-07-17
( printed page 45179) Proclamation 11044 of July 13, 2026 Modifying the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument A Proclamation On September 18, 1996, as part of an effort to prevent development of significant coal reserves and other resources on the Kaiparowits Plateau, President Clinton issued Proclamation 6920, which established the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (Monument) in the State of Utah, reserving approximately 1.7 million acres of Federal lands as part of the Monument, and directing that it be managed by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM). On
What this record contains
- Federal Register document
- 2026-14549
- Publication date
- 2026-07-17
- Citation
- 91 FR 45179
- Issuing office
- Executive Office of the President
Official record excerpt
( printed page 45179) Proclamation 11044 of July 13, 2026 Modifying the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument A Proclamation On September 18, 1996, as part of an effort to prevent development of significant coal reserves and other resources on the Kaiparowits Plateau, President Clinton issued Proclamation 6920, which established the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (Monument) in the State of Utah, reserving approximately 1.7 million acres of Federal lands as part of the Monument, and directing that it be managed by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM). On December 4, 2017, exercising my authority under section 320301 of title 54, United States Code (the “Antiquities Act”), I issued Proclamation 9682 to modify the boundaries of the Monument, ensure proper management, and more closely reflect the intent of the Antiquities Act. Proclamation 9682 removed approximately 860,000 acres from the Monument. On October 8, 2021, President Biden issued Proclamation 10286, increasing the size of the Monument to approximately 1.87 million acres, the size of the Monument immediately prior to the issuance of Proclamation 9682. The Antiquities Act authorizes the President to declare historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated on land owned or controlled by the Federal Government to be national monuments. The Antiquities Act further requires that any parcel of land reserved as part of a monument be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected. Where the President determines that the structures and objects identified by a prior monument proclamation no longer are, or never were, deserving of the Antiquities Act's protections, the Antiquities Act permits the President to remove land from the monument and return it to its prior federally managed status. Determining the appropriate protective area involves examining several factors, including the uniqueness and nature of the objects to be protected, the nature of the protection needed, the protection provided to those objects by other laws, executive department and agency resources available to manage the parcel, and whether the lands are better suited for other non-monument uses. Proclamation 10286 suffers from several flaws that warrant its reconsideration. First, Proclamation 10286 was premised on the purported need to protect items that are not historic landmarks, historic or prehistoric structures, or objects of historic or scientific interest. This included a long list of generic topographic and geologic features such as “vast and austere landscape[s],” “sedimentary rock layers,” and “bold plateaus and multihued cliffs.” These generic features described in Proclamation 10286 do not become “landmarks,” “structures,” or “objects of historic or scientific interest” worthy of protection under the Antiquities Act simply because they are scenic. Second, certain landmarks, structures, or objects identified in Proclamation 10286 that could, in other circumstances, have the necessary historic or scientific interest, are not unique to the Monument, and their relative commonness suggests that the specific instances of such objects found within the Monument are not of particular historic or scientific interest. Examples of these relatively common objects include cultural, paleontological, and ( printed page 45180) geological resources within the Monument that are found throughout the Four Corners region and, in some cases, throughout the American West. Accordingly, a monument reservation was neither necessary nor appropriate to protect items that are not historic landmarks, historic or prehistoric structures, or other objects of historic or scientific interest or items that may qualify as such but are sufficiently common to not warrant protection under the Antiquities Act. Third, because Proclamation 10286 expanded the land reserved for the Monument only to protect objects of no significant historic or scientific interest, that Proclamation disregarded the Antiquities Act's requirement that the reservation of Federal lands for a national monument be confined to the “smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” Had the reservation been properly tailored to protect only those objects warranting protection under the Antiquities Act, it would have been much smaller. Finally, the added reservation of land was unnecessary to protect many of the objects of historic or scientific identified by Proclamation 10286, which are already subject to the enhanced protections provided under Federal laws enacted after the Antiquities
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