Interior Dept recommends reducing Bears Ears, other protected land: report

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is recommending that the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments be reduced, according to a department report obtained by The Wall Street Journal.

The report, sent to the White House by the Department of the Interior in August, recommends scaling back the two national monuments as well as reopening hundreds of thousands of miles of protected oceans to commercial fishing.

“The Trump administration does not comment on leaked documents, especially internal drafts which are still under review by the president and relevant agencies,” White House spokeswoman Kelly Love told the Journal in a statement Sunday.

Other land monuments were also recommended for downsizing or being made less restrictive, according to the Journal. Those included Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou, Nevada’s Gold Butte, Maine’s Katahdin, and New Mexico’s Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande Del Norte.

The areas that would be reopened to commercial fishing include Northeast Canyons and Seamounts off the Massachusetts coast and both Rose Atoll and the Pacific Remote Islands.

— Timothy Cama contributed to this report, which was updated on Sept. 18 at 7:43 a.m.