Conservation Lands Foundation: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Spared

Good news for the end of the week: The U.S. Senate went home (June 11) — without voting on Utah Senator Mike Lee’s joint resolution to undo the management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument using the Congressional Review Act. They have let a 60-day session deadline pass without voting on it, so if they take it up in the future, it will need 60 “yes” votes to pass, instead of a 53-vote majority. This gives us time and opportunity to convince more key Senators to defeat it. The resolution, if it had passed into law, would erase years of local and Tribal input in the monument’s management plan and essentially put Congress in charge of the national monument in southern Utah—and put all other monuments in their crosshairs. More STORY.