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220 18 JANUARY 2019 • VOL 363 ISSUE 6424 sciencemag.org SCIENCE
grounds, which are once again open to min-
ing (although new projects must go through
BLM’s usual review process). The land will
also lose out on resources aimed at beef-
ing up research, such as personnel—Grand
Staircase got its own paleontologist, for
example—and special funding to develop
scientific and cultural resources.
That money—part of federal funding for
BLM lands protected for their scientific
resources—not only funds ongoing projects
and spurs new discoveries; it also helps
ensure that scientists find those resources
before looters do. Looting has long been
a problem in San Juan County, where the
monument is located. When Gay and his
students found the phytosaur cache in
2016, for example, a snout from one of the
creatures was missing. It was eventually re-
turned, but looters rarely repent, Gay says.
Without the protection and increased atten-
tion from BLM officials, he fears the excised
areas are more vulnerable to pillaging.
Scientists will also have to compete with
law-abiding private fossil collectors. The
2009 Paleontological Resources Preservation
Act makes removing vertebrate fossils from
federal lands a crime for nonscientists. But
the rules are different for plant and inverte-
brate fossils, which are crucial to understand-
ing ancient ecosystems and evolution. Within
a monument, those fossils, too, can be col-
lected only by researchers, but outside monu-
ment boundaries, anyone can gather and sell
them. “Without special protection, [the sites]
are more vulnerable to vandalism, which
they have suffered in the past, and [fossils]
can be more easily sold away to private buy-
ers or repurposed for other uses,” Gay says.
BLM has long insisted that it does what’s
needed to protect scientific and cultural
resources on public land. Its managementplan for the newly shrunken monument is
still under development, but in an August
2017 statement, BLM’s Utah director, Ed
Roberson, called Bears Ears a remarkable
landscape and said the agency’s preferred
blueprint provides “maximum management
flexibility while protecting Monument ob-
jects and resource values.” But unlike the
other three draft plans, one of which would
“prioritize the protection of Monument ob-
jects and values over other resources,” BLM’s
preferred plan emphasizes “multiple uses.”
(Because of the ongoing federal government
shutdown, a BLM spokesperson could not
respond to specific questions from Science.)
Research on the excised lands is now in
limbo, and Gay, Huttenlocker, and other
paleontologists are racing to do as much as
they can before their monument-tied funding
dries up. Only one round of Bears Ears fund-
ing was doled out before Trump’s proclama-
tion. BLM has agreed to let researchers finish
their work under those grants, but when that
money runs out, projects outside the new
monument boundaries may be left without
crucial federal support, Polly says. And al-
though paleontologists can still get permits
to investigate and dig for fossils on the for-
mer Bears Ears lands, the process won’t be as
easy as before, when science was a priority,
Polly says. Now, paleontology is just one of
many uses, competing with mining, off-road-
ing, and grazing.
In comments submitted to BLM, SVP
urged the agency to treat now-unprotected
areas as though they still had monument
protection, giving priority to science and
conservation. SVP also recommended that
the agency hire four paleontologists for the
greater Bears Ears area and continue to
support research there.
As BLM proceeds with its plans for the
shrunken monument, SVP and the other
plaintiffs are hoping for a swift victory.
They’ve already notched one win—having
the case heard in Washington, D.C., instead
of Utah, which the administration consid-
ered more welcoming. They now await Dis-
trict Judge Tanya Chutkan’s decision on a
Department of Justice request to dismiss
the lawsuit.
As the case wends its way through the
courts, paleontologists are scrambling to
unlock Bears Ears’s secrets. In Los Angeles,
Huttenlocker and his colleagues labor to
piece together the story of their newly found
Dimetrodon. In western Colorado, Gay is
eager to return to his phytosaur site before
looters do. Meanwhile, scientists hope the
sacred twin buttes that gave Bears Ears its
name will continue to guard its treasures.jApril Reese is a freelance journalist based
in Santa Fe.Monumental reversal
In December 2017, President Donald Trump issued proclamations shrinking Bears Ears National Monument
by 85% and nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half, leaving out fossil-rich areas
such as the Valley of the Gods and the northern portion of Indian Creek.
CREDITS: (GRAPHIC) A. CUADRA/SCIENCE; (DATA) SOUTHERN UTAH WILDERNESS ALLIANCE0 20
U TA H KmARIZONAValley of
the GodsIndian
CreekRed CanyonWhite Mesa MillBears Ears
buttesCedar
MesaBlufBlandingMonticelloObama monument boundaries
Trump monument boundaries Mexican HatBears Ears
National
MonumentMoab0 100
Km
Salt Lake CityUTAH
Bears Ears
National
Grand Staircase- Monument
Escalante National
MonumentPublished by AAASon January 17, 2019^http://science.sciencemag.org/Downloaded from