On May 7, I put on my “Protect Bears Ears” T-shirt and took the yellow and black “Protect Wild Utah” sign from my front yard. Then I rode the bus downtown to join the crowd protesting in front of the Bureau of Land Management office at the Gateway mall. President Trump’s new Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, was visiting Utah in order to tour both the brand new Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase Escalante which was declared a National Monument by President Clinton in 1996. He was under orders from the President to consider reducing the size of both National Monuments, and there were fears that he might try to rescind Bears Ears altogether. We wanted to be sure that Zinke would see a large outpouring of local support despite disinformation from some Utah politicos who were saying that people in Utah didn’t support the National Monuments.
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