Grand Staircase-Escalante

From the The Salt Lake Tribune:

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument — whose rugged beauty was formed over the ages by ice, wind and water — has weathered its biggest legal storm.

On Monday, a federal judge upheld former President Clinton’s use of the Antiquities Act to designate the embattled reserve in southern Utah nearly eight years ago.

In a 47-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Dee Benson rejected each of the “myriad claims” offered by the Utah Association of Counties (UAC) and the Colorado-based Mountain States Legal Foundation, a group that represents grazing, mining and motorized-recreation interests in the West.

Staircase.jpg

President Clinton, joined by Vice President Al Gore on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, signs a [proclamation] declaring 1.7 million acres of southern Utah’s redrock cliffs and canyons as the Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument in September 1996.

Try to imagine Bush and Cheney doing this.