Thirty-seven Democratic senators are denouncing President Donald Trump for downsizing the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.
In a Tuesday letter, the lawmakers said the White House’s removal last month of nearly 3 million acres of protected land in the two monuments risks the “destruction and loss” of the archaeological and cultural resources in those areas.
“Each monument is a living cultural landscape with deep spiritual and ancestral importance to multiple Tribal Nations,” the lawmakers wrote. “These places are not abstractions on a map; they are homelands and sacred sites that deserve enduring protection.”
The letter was led by New Mexico Sens. Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, as well as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
