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WASHINGTON – President Biden is expected to announce on Friday that he will use his executive authority to restore sweeping environmental protections to three major national monuments that were stripped by former President Donald J. Trump, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Mr Biden will restore and slightly expand the original 1.3 million acre boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument, and restore the original 1.8 million acre boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante, two expanses Utah’s rugged and pristine areas that are defined by red rock canyons, rich in wildlife and archaeological treasures.
It will also restore protections covering the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine monument, the northeastern canyons and seamounts, an expanse of sea canyons and seamounts off the New England coast.
Mr Trump had sharply reduced the size of the three national monuments at the behest of ranchers, fishermen and many Republican leaders, opening them up to mining, drilling and development.
Mr. Trump’s 2017 decision to cut Bears Ears by nearly 85% has alarmed paleontologists, environmentalists and Native American groups. Bears Ears is rich in fossils dating back hundreds of millions of years and is an important cultural landmark for tribal nations.
Bears Ears and the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts were both established by President Barack Obama in 2016. Grand Staircase-Escalante was established by President Bill Clinton in 1996.
A White House spokesperson declined to confirm the announcement.
On the first day of his tenure, Biden ordered a review of the removal of monument protections to “determine whether the restoration of the monument’s boundaries and conditions would be appropriate.”
In June, Deb Haaland, the Home Secretary, sent a report to Mr Biden advising him to restore the monuments’ original boundaries.
Bears Ears is named after a pair of towering buttes that dominate much of the southeastern Utah landscape, and it is the site of ancient Indigenous rock dwellings and sacred burial grounds. It is the ancestral homeland of five tribal nations – the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Ute Indian Tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Pueblo of Zuni.
Ms. Haaland, the country’s first Native American cabinet secretary, is a member of the Laguna Pueblo. She now heads the federal agency which, for much of the country’s history, played a central role in the dislocation and abuse of Indigenous communities from coast to coast, and she made Native American issues. top priority.
In a 2019 interview with The Guardian, Ms Haaland described a recent camping trip she took to Bears Ears. “There are some pretty amazing ruins there, and you know, I don’t even like to call them ruins, because in our culture, in the Pueblo culture, if you recognize our ancestors, they are there”, a- she declared. “The spirit of the people never leaves.”
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