by Marjorie Haun
Dear President Trump and Interior Secretary Burgum, Utah has a story to tell.
With three-quarters of its lands and resources controlled by the federal government, Utah and its people have been held hostage for decades to the whims of dogmatic and (political favor) debt-ridden Democrat administrations. Rural counties extraordinarily rich in natural resources; oil, gas and coal, uranium, vanadium, and rare earth elements worth billions of dollars, are left ignored and impoverished. The years of struggle are due largely to the intentional misrepresentation of a 1906 preservation law, the Antiquities Act.
The Act, devised by Theodore Roosevelt to safeguard historic and scientific treasures on federal land, has been forged by Democrat administrations into a tool for vast land grabs that deepen restrictions on lands and resources already constrained by layers of federal mandates. Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments in southern Utah stand as prime examples of heavy-handed federal overreach without local consent.
Objects protected by the Antiquities Act were to be confined to the smallest area compatible with their proper care and management. But since the Clinton era, Democrat presidents have placed upwards of 2-billion acres on land and on sea off-limits to human benefit. President Obama wrecked fishing industries with marine monuments like Papahānaumokuākea National Monument, which banned commercial fishing across millions of acres of Pacific waters.
With Trump’s 2024 victory, Utah has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to undo decades of unjust federal landgrabs and return millions of acres of lands and resources back to the people who simply want a shot at prosperity. Trump and his Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, are the dream team of energy and natural resource development. Burgum, former governor of North Dakota, is an energy guy with deep expertise in domestic natural resource development, and he’s fighting to advance drilling, mining, and resource extraction on federal lands. Determined to restore America as the global superpower, President Trump makes energy dominance a top priority. Green groups, politicos and left-wing activists are sweating bullets over the imminent and strong possibility that President Trump will again downsize Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bear’s Ears to the Antiquities Act’s “smallest area compatible.”
I invite him to do so with haste.
Flashback: The Expendables of Rural Utah
In the waning days of his 1996 reelection campaign, President Clinton stood at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona and proclaimed the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a nearly 2 million-acre designation in southern Utah’s Kane (85% federally controlled) and Garfield (90% federally controlled) counties.
On December 28, 2016, while on vacation in Hawaii, President Obama declared 1.36 million-acres in San Juan County (82% federally controlled) as the Bear’s Ears National Monument, again with significant local opposition.
These counties were thrust into a game of political ping pong, with Trump dramatically shrinking the monuments in 2017, and Biden re-expanding them in 2021. The number of resolutions, proclamations and lawsuits surrounding these overwrought monuments is dizzying, and they’ve left communities and families economically adrift.
The Kaiparowits Plateau
The Kaiparowits Plateau holds an estimated 62 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves. In the early 1990s, Andalex Resources had secured federal leases for the Smoky Hollow Mine, to extract high-quality bituminous, low-sulfur coal—including premium metallurgical grades essential for steel production. This underground coal mine would have produced up to 7 million tons annually over 50 years. The project promised 900-1,000 direct jobs and billions in tax revenues.
Hollywood actor Robert Redford settled in Utah in the early 1970s and used his popularity to further a radical green agenda opposing mining and oil & gas drilling on federal lands. When Andalex Resources sought to revive coal mining on the Kaiparowits plateau, Redford joined the Sierra Club, Wilderness Defense Fund, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and others to stop the project.
Historically, southern Utah thrived with high-paying mining jobs and related revenues. Opposition of the coal project by Redford and his green allies infuriated the local residents but little did they know that in 1996 a wholesale federal landgrab would follow.
The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument designation process itself was a masterclass in exclusionary politics. Clinton’s administration negotiated in secret with environmental organizations, deliberately sidelining Utah’s elected officials and locals who would bear the brunt of the decision. State leaders discovered the plan through newspaper leaks mere days before the announcement, sparking outrage and protests where locals flew flags at half-mast. The new monument’s boundaries swallowed the Kaiparowits Plateau, forbidding new mining claims and infrastructure, shuttering operations overnight and erasing any hope of economic prosperity in the region.
Insult to Injury
In 1999, the federal government compensated Andalex with a mere $14 million, covering sunk costs like an $8 million environmental impact study, while ignoring the coal’s projected $3 billion value for the leases alone—or up to $1 trillion for the full field at 1990s prices. The sum added insult to injury. While urban environmentalists celebrated, small communities faced immediate job losses and long-term economic decline. Lumber mills closed, school enrollments plummeted, and families fled. Garfield County declared an economic emergency in 2015, blaming the monument for eroding “social and economic stability.”
Political Favors
Political motives behind Clinton’s betrayal of Utah and its people were particularly sleazy because, yes of course, it was about the money. Clinton had deep ties to Indonesian tycoon James Riady and the Lippo Group, who donated illegal campaign contributions of nearly half a million dollars between 1991-1996. Riady, who pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy in 2001 and paid an $8.6 million fine, had energy interests that would benefit from cutbacks in U.S. coal production. Indonesia harbors coal deposits very similar to the unique and valuable metallurgical coal found in the Kaiparowits. By all appearances, Clinton’s monumental landgrab was a payback to foreign donors. The conservation angle was just window dressing.
The Wealth Under Our Feet
As the West reopens to resource exploration and extraction, southern Utah is again bubbling with urban (for) vs rural (against) debates over the Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Bear’s Ears. Trump’s energy and critical mineral initiatives are driving the greens batty with worry.
The Colorado Plateau, a vast sagebrush sea broken up by deep canyons, sandstone outcroppings, laccolithic mountain ranges, beautiful rivers, and scattered Native American antiquities also teems with high-grade metallurgical coal, uranium, vanadium, copper, and rare earth minerals. The plateau’s treasures are made inaccessible by a patchwork of sprawling national monuments, parks, conservation areas and wilderness study areas. Democrat politicians and green groups want even more lands locked up, not merely as a tribute to doomsday “save the planet” narratives, but as a gesture to foreign billionaire donors who dream of shattering America’s sovereignty and international clout.
Grim false narratives about extraction and drilling have all been debunked. America’s mining industry has the most rigorous environmental and health & safety standards in the world. Environmental protections and human well-being are factored into every activity related to permitting and operating 21st Century mines. There are no rational justifications for fostering poverty where the ingredients of wealth abound.
And so, President Trump and Secretary Burgum, Utah needs a happy ending to this story, restore the rights of the true guardians of this land — the good people who live in southern Utah!
