Two New National Monuments Created in Utah and Nevada
Bears Ears and Gold Butte protect more than 1.6 million acres in all. Conservationists are delighted—but conservatives are outraged.
In perhaps the final major act of conservation of his administration, President Barack Obama on Wednesday designated 1.35 million acres in southeast Utah and 300,000 acres in Nevada as two new national monuments.
The Bears Ears National Monument in Utah—named for twin buttes that poke above the horizon—will protect a diverse southwestern landscape that the novelist Wallace Stegner wrote could “fill up the eye and overflow the soul.” It includes soaring red-rock formations, piñon-juniper mesas, 12,000-foot-high mountain peaks, and secluded sandstone canyons that harbor well-preserved prehistoric dwellings and rock-art panels—more than 100,000 Native American cultural and archaeological sites in all. It’s among the most significant archaeological areas in the United States.
The Gold Butte National Monument, northeast of Las Vegas,
