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President Biden signed three proclamations on Friday that restore environmental protections of two national monuments in Utah and a marine conservation area in New England, protections that had been removed under the former president Assetis the weather at the White House.
Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Marine Monuments will have their protections restored.
“National monuments and parks are part of our identity as a people,” Biden said shortly before signing the documents. “They are the birthright that we pass on from generation to generation, a birthright of every American.”
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The restoration of the Bears Ears National Monument brings back the limits set by the old president obama in 2016 and retains protections for an additional 11,200 acres added by Trump in 2017. The action will ensure that the total protected area of Bears Ears National Monument covers 1.36 million acres.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, was disappointed with Biden’s decision to restore the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments, which the Trump administration significantly reduced in 2017.
Grand Staircase-Escalante was first protected in 1996. Biden’s decision restores the protected area to 1.87 million acres.
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The monuments cover vast expanses of southern Utah where red rocks reveal petroglyphs and rock dwellings and distinctive knolls rise from a grassy valley. Trump used the Antiquities Act to cut 2 million acres from the two monuments, calling restrictions on mining and other energy production a “massive land grab” that “should never have happened “.
The Trump administration’s cuts to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante have paved the way for possible coal and oil and gas drilling on land that was previously off-limits.
Fox News’ Brooke singman and the Associated Press contributed to this article.
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