Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities


** Undoing Utah monument protections risks legal chaos
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Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. Source: BLM Flickr ([link removed])

Utah Representative Celeste Maloy is considering using the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to toss out the management plan for Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument ([link removed]) , a move that legal analysts say would risk legal chaos on public lands ([link removed]) . Maloy asked the Government Accountability Office last year whether the management plan is a “rule” that is subject to the CRA. The GAO responded in a report ([link removed]) released this year that the plan is a rule, clearing the way for Congress to attempt to throw it out.

Congress had never overturned any land management plan using the CRA prior to 2025, and has now done so for locally-developed resource management plans for public lands in Alaska ([link removed]) , Wyoming ([link removed]) , North Dakota ([link removed]) , and Montana ([link removed]) . Maloy's threat to use the CRA on a national monument management plan is unprecedented.

“This area is becoming a big mess, legally speaking,” said ([link removed]) Deborah Sivas, director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law and Policy Program at Stanford Law School. Sivas noted that using the CRA will leave parts of the monument without a management plan, and raises a serious question of what happens next because the CRA permanently prohibits the BLM from adopting a plan of ‘substantially the same form.’

According to Andrew Mergen, an environmental law professor at Harvard Law School, there is not much case law to determine what makes a rule substantially the same, which will make it difficult to develop a new management plan. “It is deeply disrespectful of the public’s role and must be devastating to the public servants who work hard to make good judgments and incorporate and respond to public concerns,” said ([link removed]) Mergen.


** Quick hits
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Ammon Bundy is all alone

The Atlantic ([link removed])

Lawmakers probe Trump's mineral megadeals

Nevada Current ([link removed]) | Las Vegas Review-Journal ([link removed]) | E&E News ([link removed])

Trump administration flounders on enforcing national park reservations

SF Gate ([link removed])

Bozeman-based Headwaters Economics defuses divisive public lands debates with data

Bozeman Daily Chronicle ([link removed])

Rare sheep cross U.S.-Mexico border but they're hitting a sharp new obstacle

Los Angeles Times ([link removed])

Undoing Utah national monument protections risks legal chaos

Bloomberg Law ([link removed])

Essay: What we lose if we lose the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument

Shasta Scout ([link removed])

Judge bars further changes to George Washington's Philadelphia house

New York Times ([link removed])


** Quote of the day
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” The Trump administration is moving forward to sell millions of acres of our public lands under the guise of affordable housing. This is about oligarchy, and this is what it looks like.”

—Nick Gevock of the Sierra Club, Bozeman Daily Chronicle ([link removed])


** Picture This
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@usinterior ([link removed])
Look at that face! 🥰

For long-tailed weasels, turning white for the winter is a matter of survival. These highly resourceful and downright adorable creatures are fearless hunters who attack animals far larger than themselves, like squirrels and rabbits.

Photo by Jim Peaco

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