The outdoor apparel maker joined environmental and Native American groups in challenging President Trump’s reduction of Bears Ears National Monument.
The outdoor apparel company Patagonia joined conservation and tribal groups to sue President Trump on Wednesday, seeking to overturn his move to shrink Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah by more than one million acres.
The lawsuit escalated Patagonia’s feud with Mr. Trump, which began in the president’s first term and became a core part of its corporate strategy. And it kicked off a sweeping legal battle over whether presidents have the power to shrink such sites in the first place.
Mr. Trump signed a proclamation in July that cut 91 percent of Bears Ears, an expanse of red-rock canyons rich with archaeologically significant sites, reducing its area by more than 1.2 million acres. He also shrank a second monument in southern Utah, Grand Staircase-Escalante, by nearly 1.7 million acres, or 90 percent.
President Trump’s proclamations have reduced Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by over 90 percent.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Utah Geospatial Resource Center. Mira Rojanasakul/The New York Times
The moves opened vast stretches of the desert landscape to oil drilling, uranium mining and other development. Companies have already staked at least nine mining claims in areas that were removed from both monuments, records show.
But the suit argues that the law governing national monuments, the Antiquities Act of 1906, authorizes presidents to designate the sites but not to shrink them.
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