82 FR 58081 - Modifying the Bears Ears National Monument
Executive Office of the President
Federal Register Volume 82, Issue 235 (December 8, 2017)
Page Range
58081-58087
FR Document
2017-26709
Federal Register, Volume 82 Issue 235 (Friday, December 8, 2017)
[Federal Register Volume 82, Number 235 (Friday, December 8, 2017)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 58081-58087]
From the Federal Register Online [www.thefederalregister.org]
[FR Doc No: 2017-26709]
[[Page 58079]]
Vol. 82
Friday,
No. 235
December 8, 2017
Part IV
The President
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Proclamation 9681--Modifying the Bears Ears National Monument
Proclamation 9682--Modifying the Grand Staircase-Escalante National
Monument
Presidential Documents
Federal Register / Vol. 82 , No. 235 / Friday, December 8, 2017 /
Presidential Documents
___________________________________________________________________
Title 3--
The President
[[Page 58081]]
Proclamation 9681 of December 4, 2017
Modifying the Bears Ears National Monument
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
In Proclamation 9558 of December 28, 2016, and
exercising his authority under section 320301 of title
54, United States Code (the ``Antiquities Act''),
President Barack Obama established the Bears Ears
National Monument in the State of Utah, reserving
approximately 1.35 million acres of Federal lands for
the care and management of objects of historic and
scientific interest identified therein. The monument is
managed jointly by the Department of the Interior's
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Department of
Agriculture's United States Forest Service (USFS). This
proclamation makes certain modifications to the
monument.
Proclamation 9558 identifies a long list of objects of
historic or scientific interest. It describes cultural
resources such as ancient cliff dwellings (including
the Moon House and Doll House Ruins), Moki Steps,
Native American ceremonial sites, tools and projectile
points, remains of single-family dwellings, granaries,
kivas, towers, large villages, rock shelters, caves,
and a prehistoric road system, as well as petroglyphs,
pictographs, and recent rock art left by the Ute,
Navajo, and Paiute peoples. It also identifies other
types of historic objects, such as remnants of Native
American sheep-herding and farming operations and early
engineering by pioneers and settlers, including
smoothed sections of rock, dugways, historic cabins,
corrals, trails, and inscriptions carved into rock, and
the Hole-in-the-Rock and Outlaw Trails. It also
describes landscape features such as the Bears Ears,
Comb Ridge, Cedar Mesa, the Valley of the Gods, the
Abajo Mountains, and the San Juan River, and
paleontological resources such as the fossil remains of
fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, as well as
dinosaur trackways and traces of other terrestrial
animals. Finally, it identifies several species,
including animals like the porcupine, badger, and
coyote; birds like the red-tailed hawk, Mexican spotted
owl, American kestrel, and turkey vulture; and plants
such as the Fremont cottonwood, Abajo daisy, western
sandbar willow, and boxelder.
The Antiquities Act requires that any reservation of
land as part of a monument be confined to the smallest
area compatible with the proper care and management of
the objects of historic or scientific interest to be
protected. Determining the appropriate protective area
involves examination of a number of factors, including
the uniqueness and nature of the objects, the nature of
the needed protection, and the protection provided by
other laws.
Some of the objects Proclamation 9558 identifies are
not unique to the monument, and some of the particular
examples of these objects within the monument are not
of significant scientific or historic interest.
Moreover, many of the objects Proclamation 9558
identifies were not under threat of damage or
destruction before designation such that they required
a reservation of land to protect them. In fact, objects
described in Proclamation 9558 were then--and still
are--subject to Federal protections under existing laws
and agency management designations. For example, more
than 500,000 acres were already being managed to
maintain, enhance, or protect their roadless character
before they were designated as part of a national
monument. Specifically, the BLM manages approximately
380,759 acres of lands
[[Page 58082]]
within the existing monument as Wilderness Study Areas,
which the BLM is required by law to manage so as not to
impair their suitability for future congressional
designation as Wilderness. On lands managed by the
USFS, 46,348 acres are part of the congressionally
designated Dark Canyon Wilderness Area, which, under
the 1964 Wilderness Act, 16 U.S.C. 1131-1136, and the
Utah Wilderness Act of 1984, Public Law 98-428, the
USFS must manage so as to maintain or enhance its
wilderness character. Approximately 89,396 acres of the
USFS lands are also included in 8 inventoried roadless
areas, which are managed under the USFS's 2001 Roadless
Rule so as to protect their wilderness character.
A host of laws enacted after the Antiquities Act
provide specific protection for archaeological,
historic, cultural, paleontological, and plant and
animal resources and give authority to the BLM and USFS
to condition permitted activities on Federal lands,
whether within or outside a monument. These laws
include the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of
1979, 16 U.S.C. 470aa-470mm, National Historic
Preservation Act, 54 U.S.C. 300101 et seq., Bald and
Golden Eagle Protection Act, 16 U.S.C. 668-668d,
Endangered Species Act of 1973, 16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.,
Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988, 16
U.S.C. 4301 et seq., Federal Land Policy and Management
Act of 1976, 43 U.S.C. 1701 et seq., Migratory Bird
Treaty Act, 16 U.S.C. 703-712, National Forest
Management Act, 16 U.S.C. 1600 et seq., Native American
Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1976, 25
U.S.C. 3001 et seq., and Paleontological Resources
Preservation Act, 16 U.S.C. 470aaa-470aaa-11. Of
particular note, the Archaeological Resources
Protection Act specifically protects archaeological
resources from looting or other desecration and imposes
criminal penalties for unauthorized excavation,
removal, damage, alteration, or defacement of
archaeological resources. Federal land management
agencies can grant a permit authorizing excavation or
removal, but only when undertaken for the purpose of
furthering archaeological knowledge. The
Paleontological Resources Preservation Act contains
very similar provisions protecting paleontological
resources. And the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and
Endangered Species Act protect migratory birds and
listed endangered and threatened species and their
habitats. Moreover, the BLM and the USFS were already
addressing many of the threats to objects identified in
Proclamation 9558 in their governing land-use plans
before designation of the monument.
Given the nature of the objects identified on the lands
reserved by Proclamation 9558, the lack of a threat of
damage or destruction to many of those objects, and the
protection for those objects already provided by
existing law and governing land-use plans, I find that
the area of Federal land reserved in the Bears Ears
National Monument established by Proclamation 9558 is
not confined to the smallest area compatible with the
proper care and management of those objects. The
important objects of scientific or historic interest
can instead be protected by a smaller and more
appropriate reservation of 2 areas: Shash Jaa and
Indian Creek. Revising the boundaries of the monument
to cover these 2 areas will ensure that, in accordance
with the Antiquities Act, it is no larger than
necessary for the proper care and management of the
objects to be protected within the monument.
The Shash Jaa area contains the heart of the national
monument: the iconic twin buttes known as the Bears
Ears that tower 2,000 feet above the surrounding
landscape and are considered sacred to the Native
American tribes that call this area their ancestral
home. Many of the significant objects described by
Proclamation 9558 can be found throughout the Shash Jaa
area. Ancestral Puebloan occupation of the area began
during the Basketmaker II period at least 2,500 years
ago, and it left behind objects such as pit houses,
storage pits, lithic scatters, campsites, rock
shelters, pictographs, and baskets, as well as manos
and metates for grinding corn. Occupation dating to the
Basketmaker III period, from approximately 500 to 750
C.E., left additional evidence of maize- and bean-based
agriculture, along with pottery, bows and arrows, pit
houses, kivas, storage rooms, and dispersed villages.
[[Page 58083]]
New waves of human settlement occurred around 900 C.E.,
when the Pueblo I period gave rise to large villages
near Comb Wash, and 1050 C.E., when inhabitants from
the Pueblo II period built expansive and complex multi-
family dwellings. Around 1150 C.E., the dawn of the
Pueblo III period, the area's inhabitants increasingly
sought shelter in cliff dwellings and left behind
evidence of an era of unrest. Several centuries later,
the Ute, Paiute, and Navajo came to occupy the area.
East of the Bears Ears is Arch Canyon, within which
paleontologists have found numerous fossils from the
Permian and Upper Permian eras. Cliff dwellings are
hidden throughout the canyon, and the mouth of the
canyon holds the fabled Arch Canyon ruin, which spans
the Pueblo II and III periods and contains pictographs
and petroglyphs ranging from the Archaic to the
historic periods.
Just south of Arch Canyon are the north and south forks
of Mule Canyon. Five-hundred feet deep, 5 miles long,
and decorated with alternating layers of red and white
sandstone, these 2 striking canyons contain shelter-
cliff dwellings and other archaeological sites,
including the scenic and accessible House on Fire Ruin,
which includes differing masonry styles that indicate
several episodes of construction and use.
Perched high on the open tablelands above the south
fork of Mule Canyon are the Mule Canyon ruins, where
visitors can see exposed masonry walls of ancient
living quarters and a partially restored kiva. The deep
canyons and towering mesas of the Shash Jaa area are
full of similar sites, including rock art, remains of
single-family dwellings, granaries, kivas, towers
(including the Cave Towers), and large villages
primarily from the Pueblo II and III periods, along
with sites from the Basketmaker and Archaic periods.
The Shash Jaa area also includes Comb Ridge, a north-
south trending monocline that originates near the
boundary of the Manti-La Sal National Forest, ends near
the San Juan River, and contains remnants from the
region's thousands of years of human habitation,
including cliff dwellings, granaries, kivas, ceremonial
sites, and the Butler Wash ruin, a world-famous
Ancestral Puebloan ruin with multiple rooms and kivas.
Comb Ridge also includes world-class examples of
ancient rock art, such as the Butler Wash Kachina
Panel, a wall-sized mural of San Juan Anthropomorph
figures that dates to the Basketmaker period and is
considered to be one of the Southwest's most important
petroglyph panels for understanding the daily life and
rituals of the Basketmaker people. Significant fossil
sites have also been discovered in Butler Wash.
Just north of upper Butler Wash, the aspen-filled
Whiskers Draw contains a series of alcoves that have
sheltered evidence of human habitation for thousands of
years, including Cave 7, the site where Richard
Wetherill, as part of the Hyde Expedition in 1893,
first identified what we know today as the Basketmaker
people. The nearby Milk Ranch Point is home to a rich
concentration of kivas, granaries, dwellings, and other
evidence that Pueblo I farmers used this area to
cultivate corn, beans, and squash.
The Shash Jaa area also contains the Comb Ridge Fossil
site, which includes a trackway created by a giant
arthropod (Diplichnites cuithensis), the first recorded
instance of such a trackway in Utah. Also, the diverse
landscape of the Shash Jaa area provides habitat for
the vast majority of plant and animal species described
by Proclamation 9558.
Finally, the Shash Jaa area as described on the
accompanying map includes 2 non-contiguous parcels of
land that encompass the Moon House Ruin, an example of
iconic Pueblo-decorated architecture, which was likely
the last occupied site on Cedar Mesa, as well as Doll
House Ruin, a fully intact and well-preserved single
room granary that is associated with an extensive
agricultural area on the mesa top. These significant
ruins are important examples of cultural resource
objects that should remain within the monument's
boundaries.
[[Page 58084]]
The Indian Creek area likewise contains objects of
significance described in Proclamation 9558. At its
center is the broad Indian Creek Canyon, which is
characterized by sheer red cliffs and spires of exposed
and eroded layers of Navajo, Kayenta, Wingate, and
Cedar Mesa sandstone, including the iconic North and
South Six-Shooter Peaks.
Also located within the Indian Creek area is the
Canyonlands Research Center. Spanning lands managed by
the National Park Service, BLM, USFS, and private
landowners, this unique partnership works to increase
our understanding of the complex natural systems on the
landscape, providing their custodians with information
they need to adapt to the challenges of a changing
Colorado Plateau.
Newspaper Rock, a popular attraction in the Indian
Creek area, is a roadside rock art panel that has been
listed on the National Register of Historic Places
since 1976. This site displays a significant
concentration of rock art from multiple periods, etched
into Wingate sandstone. The older art is attributed to
the Ancestral Puebloan people who inhabited this region
for 2,000 years, while the more recent rock art is
attributed to the Ute people who still live in the Four
Corners area.
In addition to Newspaper Rock, the Indian Creek area
contains numerous other significant rock art sites,
including the distinctive and well-preserved
petroglyphs in Shay Canyon. The area also provides
opportunities for cultural and scientific research and
paleontological study. Dinosaur tracks in the bottom of
the Shay Canyon stream bed are a unique visual reminder
of the area's distant past. Additional paleontological
resources can be found throughout the Indian Creek
area, including vertebrate and invertebrate fossils,
primarily in the Chinle Formation. The Indian Creek
area also includes 2 prominent mesas, Bridger Jack Mesa
and Lavender Mesa, which are home to relict plant
communities, predominantly composed of pinyon-juniper
woodland, with small, interspersed sagebrush parks,
that exist only on these isolated islands in the desert
sea and are, generally, unaltered by humans. These
mesas provide the opportunity for comparative studies
of pinyon-juniper woodland and sagebrush communities in
other parts of the Colorado Plateau. Additionally, the
Indian Creek area includes the exposed Chinle
Formation, known for abundant fossilized flora and
fauna, including pelecypods, gastropods, arthropods,
fishes, amphibians, and reptiles (including dinosaurs).
Finally, the area is well known for vertebrate
trackways, including tetrapod footprints.
Some of the existing monument's objects, or certain
examples of those objects, are not within the
monument's revised boundaries because they are
adequately protected by existing law, designation,
agency policy, or governing land-use plans. For
example, although the modified boundaries do not
include the San Juan River or the Valley of the Gods,
both of those areas are protected by existing
administratively designated Areas of Critical
Environmental Concern. Plant and animal species such as
the bighorn sheep, the Kachina daisy, the Utah night
lizard, and the Eucosma navojoensis moth are protected
by the Endangered Species Act and existing land-use
plans and policies protecting special-status species.
Additionally, some of the range of these species falls
within existing Wilderness Areas and Wilderness Study
Areas. Finally, although Hideout Canyon is likewise not
included within the modified boundaries, it is
generally not threatened and is partially within a
Wilderness Study Area.
The areas described above are the smallest compatible
with the protection of the important objects identified
in Proclamation 9558. The modification of the Bears
Ears National Monument will maintain and protect those
objects and preserve the area's cultural, scientific,
and historic legacy.
WHEREAS, Proclamation 9558 of December 28, 2016,
designated the Bears Ears National Monument in the
State of Utah and reserved approximately 1.35 million
acres of Federal lands for the care and management of
the Bears Ears buttes and other objects of historic and
scientific interest identified therein; and
[[Page 58085]]
WHEREAS, many of the objects identified by Proclamation
9558 are otherwise protected by Federal law; and
WHEREAS, it is in the public interest to modify the
boundaries of the monument to exclude from its
designation and reservation approximately 1,150,860
acres of land that I find are unnecessary for the care
and management of the objects to be protected within
the monument; and
WHEREAS, the boundaries of the monument reservation
should therefore be reduced to the smallest area
compatible with the protection of the objects of
scientific or historic interest as described above in
this proclamation;
NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the
United States of America, by the authority vested in me
by section 320301 of title 54, United States Code,
hereby proclaim that the boundaries of the Bears Ears
National Monument are hereby modified and reduced to
those lands and interests in land owned or controlled
by the Federal Government within the boundaries
described on the accompanying map, which is attached to
and forms a part of this proclamation. I hereby further
proclaim that the modified monument areas identified on
the accompanying map shall be known as the Indian Creek
and Shash Jaa units of the monument, the latter of
which shall include the Moon House and Doll House
Ruins. These reserved Federal lands and interests in
lands cumulatively encompass approximately 201,876
acres. The boundaries described on the accompanying map
are confined to the smallest area compatible with the
proper care and management of the objects to be
protected. Any lands reserved by Proclamation 9558 not
within the boundaries identified on the accompanying
map are hereby excluded from the monument.
At 9:00 a.m., eastern standard time, on the date that
is 60 days after the date of this proclamation, subject
to valid existing rights, the provisions of existing
withdrawals, and the requirements of applicable law,
the public and National Forest System lands excluded
from the monument reservation shall be open to:
(1) entry, location, selection, sale, or other
disposition under the public land laws and laws
applicable to the U.S. Forest Service;
(2) disposition under all laws relating to mineral
and geothermal leasing; and
(3) location, entry, and patent under the mining
laws.
Appropriation of lands under the mining laws before the
date and time of restoration is unauthorized. Any such
attempted appropriation, including attempted adverse
possession under 30 U.S.C. 38, shall vest no rights
against the United States. Acts required to establish a
location and to initiate a right of possession are
governed by State law where not in conflict with
Federal law.
Nothing in this proclamation shall be construed to
remove any lands from the Manti-La Sal National Forest
or to otherwise revoke, modify, or affect any
withdrawal, reservation, or appropriation, other than
the one created by Proclamation 9558.
Nothing in this proclamation shall change the
management of the areas designated and reserved by
Proclamation 9558 that remain part of the monument in
accordance with the terms of this proclamation, except
as provided by the following 4 paragraphs:
In recognition of the importance of tribal
participation to the care and management of the objects
identified above, and to ensure that management
decisions affecting the monument reflect tribal
expertise and traditional and historical knowledge,
Proclamation 9558 established a Commission to provide
guidance and recommendations on the development and
implementation of management plans and on management of
the monument, and to partner with Federal agencies by
making continuing contributions to inform decisions
regarding the management of the monument. In order to
[[Page 58086]]
ensure that the full range of tribal expertise and
traditional historical knowledge is included in such
guidance and recommendations, paragraph 29 of
Proclamation 9558 is hereby revised to provide that the
Bears Ears Commission shall be known as the Shash Jaa
Commission, shall apply only to the Shash Jaa unit as
described herein, and shall also include the elected
officer of the San Juan County Commission representing
District 3 acting in that officer's official capacity.
Proclamation 9558 is hereby revised to clarify that,
pending preparation of the transportation plan required
by paragraph 34 thereof, the Secretaries of the
Interior and Agriculture may allow motorized and non-
mechanized vehicle use on roads and trails designated
for such use immediately before the issuance of
Proclamation 9558 and maintain roads and trails for
such use.
Paragraph 35 of Proclamation 9558 governing livestock
grazing in the monument is hereby revised to read as
follows: ``Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed
to affect authorizations for livestock grazing, or
administration thereof, on Federal lands within the
monument. Livestock grazing within the monument shall
continue to be governed by laws and regulations other
than this proclamation.''
Proclamation 9558 is amended to clarify that,
consistent with the care and management of the objects
identified above, the Secretaries of the Interior and
Agriculture may authorize ecological restoration and
active vegetation management activities in the
monument.
If any provision of this proclamation, including its
application to a particular parcel of land, is held to
be invalid, the remainder of this proclamation and its
application to other parcels of land shall not be
affected thereby.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
fourth day of December, in the year of our Lord two
thousand seventeen, and of the Independence of the
United States of America the two hundred and forty-
second.
(Presidential Sig.)
Billing code 3295-F8-P
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[FR Doc. 2017-26709
Filed 12-7-17; 11:15 am]
Billing code 4310-10-C