Hundreds of thousands of acres inside what used to be Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will be opened to mineral extraction under a plan the Bureau of Land Management released Friday, renewing charges that President Donald Trump’s executive action reducing the 23-year-old preserve was engineered to promote energy extraction in some of America’s most scenic and remote landscapes.
The release comes on the heels of the final management plan for Bears Ears National Monument, the other big preserve Trump eviscerated a year into his presidency.
But the Staircase plan encompasses much more land, 1.