Mining claims appeared less than a day after Trump shrank 2 Utah national monuments

After President Donald Trump stripped nearly 3 million acres of land from two national monuments last month, it took less than 24 hours for private companies to file mining claims on the newly unprotected land, according to documents reviewed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

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On July 13, Donald Trump issued a pair of executive orders that reduced the collective footprint of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by more than 90%. The decision immediately sparked protests across Utah where the monuments are located, along with fears that the lands would soon be developed without monument designations.

The following day, on July 14, Utah-based Kimmerle Mining filed in an area that previously fell inside Bears Ears, while on Aug. 6, an individual named Craig Rosequist filed inside the former boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante. 

New claims cannot move forward before Sept. 11, 60 days after the executive orders were signed, and claims are just the first step in a process that often takes many years. Prospectors would still need to pay fees and secure permits from state and federal authorities, and given that opponents will undoubtedly challenge the legality of the shrinkage, it’s possible the Bureau of Land Management will deny them.

Even still, conservationists say the news of the mining claims validates their worst fears. 

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“The speed with which the mining industry moved to stake claims following the dismantling of the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments demonstrates the real-world consequences of stripping protections from one of America’s most important landscapes,” Bobby McEnaney, the director of land conservation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement emailed to SFGATE. “This sequence of events underscores exactly why Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante were originally established and why these landscapes deserve lasting protection. These future mining claims amount to a virtual giveaway of public lands.”

The two monuments were reduced once before in 2017 during Trump’s first presidency. Before the boundaries were restored in 2021, several new mining claims were filed within the newly opened lands, while the BLM received over 100 oil and gas lease nominations totaling tens of thousands of acres. 

Among those claims was at least one by Kimmerle Mining, the New York Times reported. The company opened a mine called Easy Peasy on land that previously fell within Bears Ears and excavated 30 tons of ore while looking for uranium and vanadium before closing and later reburying the mine. Kyle Kimmerle, a company executive, later joined  against then-President Joe Biden’s restoration of the monuments’ boundaries.