Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has announced officially what he said informally a few weeks ago: Canyons of the Ancients National Monument has survived the review process intact.

That decision is appropriate because multiple use is alive and well at the monument. Credit is due to Rep. Scott Tipton, among others, for continued advocacy for public lands.

Still in Zinke’s sights is Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Geographically huge, Bears Ears was designated at the tail end of Barack Obama’s presidential term, in keeping with the desires of a coalition of tribes with ancestral and spiritual ties to the landscape there. Although no management plan has been announced, Utah lawmakers feared the potential economic loss of extractive leases within the monument.

The Bears Ears designation drew long-settled monuments back into contention and rekindled anger about what President Donald Trump called a “massive federal land grab.” That shorthand ignores both the unique and threatened resources of the monuments and the fact that the government had only changed the management status of its own lands – it had not grabbed private property.

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