National treasures belong to us all

“Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” President Donald Trump said Monday, speaking in Utah. “And guess what? They’re wrong.”

Nope.

Sorry, Mr. President, it’s you who are wrong.

The vast acreage of the Bears Ears National Monument and the Grand Staircase-Escalante does not belong to the people of Utah.

Those natural resources belong to the people of the United States — all of us, even if we never get the opportunity to visit those sites.

And the people we have entrusted with the responsibility of protecting those lands rests with — you guessed it — “a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington.”

Why? Because when it comes to national treasures, decisions should be made on a national basis.

Undoubtedly it chafes some folks in Utah and other states of the Great American West to have so much of a state’s land under federal control. It gets in their way when it comes to little things like mining, oil exploration and otherwise exploiting natural resources.

But that’s precisely why it’s vitally important for decisions be made at a distance.

Bears Ears doesn’t belong to the state of Utah. It belongs to every American.

And sometimes the best protection comes in the form of a bureaucrat not embroiled in state politics, not vulnerable to local pressure and not so susceptible to the graft and corruption that all too often find their way into the world of mining and oil exploration.

This is not a new battle, despite the fact that it just made headlines this week.

The Antiquities Act under which President Obama expanded protection for Bears Ears dates back to the era of President Teddy Roosevelt, who was at one time a Republican icon.

President Roosevelt pushed for its passage because he knew that oil and mining interests would flood money into Congress to block expansion of the then-new National Parks program. The Antiquities Act gave that power to the president when it came to federally-owned lands.

For our current president, a court fight lies ahead. While the Antiquities Act grants the power to create National Monuments, nowhere does it give a president the power to diminish one.

And despite the political rhetoric in Salt Lake City this week, our guess is that the current occupant of the White House is going to lose on this one. — J.R.