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Want to pay less in taxes this year? Want to fight President Trump? Want to save our public lands? Donating to the charities suing to stop his reductions to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments will accomplish all three of those goals. With our public lands under unprecedented assault, we can’t think of a better time to donate than now.
Each of the linked plaintiffs below are contributing to these lawsuits—and accepting donations.
Bears Ears
Utah Dine Bikeyah, Patagonia Works, Friends of Cedar Mesa, Archeology Southwest, Conservation Lands Foundation, Access Fund, Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, National Trust for Historic Preservation
President Donald Trump, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Bureau of Land Management Director Brian Steed, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tony Tooke
Under the Antiquities Act, the president has the authority only to create monuments, not to modify or eliminate them. Only Congress can do that. Plaintiffs claim material harm from threat to cultural artifacts, recreational opportunities, and environment. Patagonia’s case is particularly interesting: It claims that the reduction makes worthless the millions of dollars it has invested in the monument, and that its other charitable efforts will suffer due to a need to invest even more in saving it.
A restoration of the original size for Bears Ears and a ban on the administration from taking further action against it.
Bears Ears
The Wilderness Society, National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust, Defenders of Wildlife, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
Same as above.
Artifacts and cultural sites are threatened by the size reduction and potential resource extraction.
To block extractive activities like drilling and mining from the area formerly protected by Obama’s monument declaration.
Grand Staircase-Escalante
The Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Grand Canyon Trust, Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity
Donald Trump, Ryan Zinke, Brian Steed
Reducing the size of the monument renders “remarkable fossil, cultural, scenic, and geological treasures exposed to immediate and ongoing harm.”
A stop to permits for drilling or mining in the area formerly protected by the monument.
Grand Staircase-Escalante
Grand Staircase-Escalante Partners, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Conservation Lands Foundation
Donald Trump, Ryan Zinke
The Antiquities Act doesn’t authorize the president to reduce the size of a monument, and doing so leaves important and threatened plants, animals, insects, artifacts, and geological formations in danger.
To stop the government from “recognizing, enforcing, or otherwise carrying out” the size reduction.