Sen. Mike Lee Invokes CRA to Rescind Grand Staircase‑Escalante Plan, Tribes Alarmed

Sen. Mike Lee moved to fast-track repeal of the Bureau of Land Management’s final management plan for Grand Staircase‑Escalante by entering a Government Accountability Office opinion into the Congressional Record on Feb. 26, clearing the procedural path for a Congressional Review Act vote. The GAO entry is the step that allows a resolution of disapproval to be fast-tracked; advocates say a resolution could be introduced in the coming days.

The action is directed at the BLM’s day-to-day management plan rather than the monument’s legal boundaries. The plan governs camping, grazing, road access, mineral extraction and cultural site protections, and the congressional maneuver would roll back limits on mineral leasing, grazing and camping while leaving boundaries intact. Representative Celeste Maloy is reported to be working on a proposal to undo the Biden‑era management plan for southern Utah’s Grand Staircase‑Escalante.

The Congressional Review Act lets Congress nullify recent agency rules and bars agencies from issuing a “substantially similar” rule in the future. Conservation groups warn of that bar: if the president signs a disapproval resolution, federal land managers would be barred from issuing any future plans mirroring the Grand Staircase framework, a legal consequence that stakeholders say could lock out the current plan’s protections.

Conservation and legal advocates responded sharply. Bobby McEnaney, director of land conservation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, “The public would not stand for legislation that gets rid of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument outright, so they’re trying to eliminate the commonsense management plan that affords day-to-day protections to the monument. Using the Congressional Review Act to unravel Grand Staircase-Escalante's management plan is an assault on a national treasure,” and added, “It would wipe out years of science and public input and lay the groundwork to make additional attacks on Grand Staircase easier. Using the CRA to overturn the Grand Staircase-Escalante management plan disregards years of public input on how these lands are managed for the public, including hunters, hikers, scientists, ranchers, and others who hold permits to use public lands inside the monument.”

The monument’s physical and scientific value underpins much of the opposition. The Bureau of Land Management notes that “Grand Staircase‑Escalante National Monument is a vast area located in southern Utah, covering nearly 1.9 million acres of diverse landscapes, including cliffs, canyons, plateaus, and badlands,” and that the monument is renowned for its paleontological history and numerous recent and significant dinosaur discoveries. President Clinton designated Grand Staircase‑Escalante in 1996, making it the first national monument managed by the BLM.

Public opinion adds another dimension: a December 2024 Grand Canyon Trust poll found that three in four Utah voters, including a majority of Republicans, support keeping Grand Staircase‑Escalante as a national monument. Conservation Lands Foundation and partner groups have publicly responded to proposals to alter the management plan, and NRDC has pointed readers to the GAO entry in the Congressional Record, noting the opinion appears on page 51.

The next procedural signs to watch are any formal introduction of a resolution of disapproval and any floor scheduling. If Congress advances a disapproval resolution and the president signs it, the immediate result would be to nullify the BLM’s final management plan and, by statute, impede the agency from issuing a substantially similar management framework in the future — a change conservationists say would remove years of science-based protections for camping, grazing, mineral leasing, road access and cultural resources inside Grand Staircase‑Escalante.