by Pepper Trail
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| Valley of the Gods in Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument. Dreamstime Photo by Paul Brady. |
The President is to reserve "the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected." —The Antiquities Act of 1906
President Trump on Monday reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah by nearly 3 million acres, teeing up a legal battle over whether presidents have the power to shrink such sites in the first place. Mr. Trump signed two executive orders to sharply cut the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments to less than 10 percent of their current size. Both sites are known for their sandstone canyons and vast mesas, which are rich in wildlife habitat as well as archaeological sites of importance to Native American tribes. —The New York Times, July 13, 2026
- A body, small, feverish with measles, crying into the hospital dark?
- An automobile, pinned to the curb, bullet-holed, its driver dead inside?
- The dancing-ground of desert grouse, scraped bare and sold for the oil beneath?
No, stick to this case:
A landscape unbroken but for the lines we draw
Canyons, plateaus, water and the channels it makes
Sagebrush and juniper, birds and lizards and deer
Marks etched on sandstone cliffs, testimony to other ways of being
A National Monument, “Bears Ears”
named by the peoples who shared this land
Hoon’Naqvut,
Shash Jaa’,
Kwiyagatu Nukavachi,
Ansh An Lashokdiwe
delineated by thousands of years of indigenous knowledge
thousands of pages of scientific analysis
thousands of voices raised for protection
or
slashed overnight by 90%
ignorance glorified
harnessed to political calculation and greed
The smallest area compatible with proper care and management?
- Our society, torn apart by division and violence?
- Our nation, sinking into a morass of corruption and tyranny?
- Our planet, hurtling toward unchecked climate chaos?
Decide
Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.
