Every few years, America stages one of its favorite political rituals. Someone adjusts the boundary of a national monument in Utah, and within minutes press releases begin flying through cyberspace declaring that civilization has officially ended. The desert will be strip-mined into oblivion by Tuesday. Every petroglyph will vanish by Thursday. Democracy itself may not survive the weekend.
It's a remarkably efficient system. No sooner had the Trump administration once again modified the limits of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante than the usual collection of environmental and sportsmen’s decoy groups, political advocacy organizations and self-appointed guardians of public virtue rushed to their keyboards to inform the country that the republic was collapsing under the burden of common-sense land management.
One almost has to admire the consistency.
After all, Utah is hardly suffering from a shortage of federally managed land. Roughly two-thirds of the entire state is already owned or controlled by the federal government. Nationwide, about one-third of America's landmass is in public ownership. Upkeeping those lands isn't free, either. Taxpayers fund an enormous network of agencies, infrastructure, wildfire suppression, law enforcement, recreation management, habitat restoration, archaeological protection and deferred maintenance that runs into the billions of dollars every year.
Yet judging from some of the rhetoric, you'd think the administration had auctioned Zion National Park on eBay with free Prime shipping.
Let's review how we arrived here. In 1996, during the closing months of his presidency, Bill Clinton designated approximately 1.7 million acres as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Two decades later, in the final weeks of his own administration, Barack Obama created Bears Ears National Monument, protecting roughly 1.35 million acres under the Antiquities Act after congressional negotiations failed. Both actions generated fierce opposition from Utah's governor, congressional delegation and many local officials, who argued that decisions affecting areas of that size should come through Congress rather than unilateral presidential proclamation.
Imagine that. Elected officials representing Utah wanted a meaningful voice in how Utah is managed.
The nerve.
Fast forward through a decade of political ping-pong. Trump reduced the monuments in 2017. Biden restored them in 2021. Trump has now modified them again, arguing that the Antiquities Act requires monuments to encompass the "smallest area compatible" with protecting the historic and scientific resources they were created to preserve. Whether the courts ultimately agree remains to be seen, but pretending this debate appeared out of nowhere last Tuesday ignores thirty years of legal and political history.
None of this means Bears Ears lacks extraordinary value. It plainly does. Its archaeological sites, Indigenous cultural meaning, spectacular scenery and scientific resources deserve serious stewardship. Grand Staircase-Escalante is equally remarkable. Reasonable people can disagree over where monument boundaries should be drawn while agreeing that the resources themselves deserve protection.
Apparently nuance, however, has been declared endangered.
Instead, every boundary adjustment becomes another opportunity for what increasingly resembles the Conservation Theater Company, in which every performance ends with Republicans cast as cartoon villains twirling imaginary mustaches while bulldozers idle beside thousand-year-old cliff dwellings.
Curiously, many of the same organizations displaying Olympic-level outrage today become strangely unavailable whenever Republican administrations expand hunting and fishing access on federal lands, support active wildlife management or challenge firearms restrictions that sportsmen argue infringe upon Second Amendment rights. Those announcements rarely produce breathless fundraising emails warning that democracy has been saved.
That's an interesting pattern.
If an organization markets itself as representing hunters, anglers and conservationists, consistency ought to matter. Celebrate expanded public access for hunting and fishing with the same enthusiasm used to condemn monument reductions. Defend sportsmen when they believe constitutional rights are threatened with the same energy devoted to opposing energy development. Praise conservation victories regardless of which party occupies the White House.
Otherwise, people begin asking uncomfortable questions.
Is the mission truly conservation? Or is conservation simply the branding wrapped around a wider political agenda?
Many of these organizations insist they are proudly nonpartisan. Yet their public communications increasingly resemble opposition research from the Democratic National Committee, interrupted occasionally by photographs of trout streams and bugling elk. Every Republican initiative is portrayed as ecological apocalypse. Every Democratic proclamation is treated as enlightened statesmanship. At some point, even loyal members begin noticing the script never changes.
Conservation deserves better than partisan reflexes.
America's public lands have always succeeded because of balance, not absolutes. Theodore Roosevelt understood that. Gifford Pinchot understood it. They advocated stewardship, sustainable use and responsible management—not the notion that every disagreement over land policy requires declaring the end of civilization before lunch.
The truth is considerably less dramatic. Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will remain inspiring visitors. Archaeological treasures will continue deserving protection. Utah's elected leaders will continue arguing that states should have greater influence over lands within their borders.
Environmental organizations will continue filing lawsuits. And somewhere, an email consultant is already drafting another fundraising appeal explaining that this latest policy dispute is literally unlike anything humanity has ever experienced.
Until the next administration redraws another line on the map.
Then, as always, we'll declare the sky is falling all over again.
– Chris Dorsey
Chris Dorsey is a 30-year media veteran and conservation thought leader who is the founding partner of Dorsey Pictures, a Global 100 Production Studio, and Mission Partners Entertainment Group, a leading IMAX/giant screen natural history producer.