Congress Moves to Unravel Grand Staircase-Escalante Management Plans

Photo credit: Patrick Hendry

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah is home to world-class outdoor recreation, from paddling and hiking to climbing, camping, and canyoneering. Now, lawmakers want to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to throw out the monument’s current management plan, putting those opportunities, and the landscape itself, at risk.

The most recent management plan, finalized in 2022, was developed through years of public input, including engagement with the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition, local communities, and recreation stakeholders. The result is a balanced approach that reflects the monument’s cultural, historical, environmental, and recreational values.

Undoing that plan would create uncertainty for how the monument is managed and how people access it. The proposed rollback threatens recreation opportunities and the many communities that depend on them.

“The management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante represents years of collaboration to balance recreation, conservation, and cultural values,” said Adam Cramer, CEO of Outdoor Alliance. “Wiping it out with the Congressional Review Act wouldn’t just affect this monument—it would create uncertainty for public lands nationwide and make it harder to manage them responsibly in the future.”

The CRA is an obscure, rarely-used tool that allows Congress to overturn recently-finalized agency rules with a simple majority vote. The CRA has been used sparingly until the current administration, where it has been used more than two dozen times and is being applied, using workarounds, to management plans that were finalized years ago. Using the CRA to overturn land management plans is erasing years of public input—including in places like the Boundary Waters and with other management places—replacing it with rushed political decisions. The CRA also prevents agencies from developing “substantially similar” plans in the future, making it much harder to create the kind of balanced, multi-use frameworks that support recreation, conservation, and local economies. Applying the CRA in this way creates uncertainty far beyond Grand Staircase-Escalante: it calls into question land management plans across the country, deters communities from making the substantial investment to participate in planning efforts, and threatens access to public lands at a broader scale.

Take action to tell your lawmakers to reject rollbacks to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument protections using our easy-action tool below.