Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

( printed page 57335) Proclamation 10286 of October 8, 2021 Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument A Proclamation President Clinton's designation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Proclamation 6920 of September 18, 1996, was a watershed moment for conservation in the United States. Proclamation 6920 represents the first time a President designated a national monument under the Antiquities Act to be managed by the Bureau of Land Management, signaling the dawn of the modern era of Antiquities Act protection and a reawakening of conservation efforts on public lands in the West. Proclamation 6920 describes the rich mosaic of objects of historic and scientific interest across Grand Staircase-Escalante. Proclamation 6920 details the monument's varied geology, from the cliffs of the Grand Staircase in the west, to the fossil-rich formations in the Kaiparowits Plateau that demonstrate billions of years of geology infused with world-class paleontological sites, to the badlands of the Burning Hills in the center, to the intricate and complex system of canyons in the Escalante region in the east. The proclamation goes on to describe the area's rich human history, spanning from the indigenous people and cultures who made this area home to Anglo-American explorers and early Latter-day Saint pioneers. The proclamation further identifies outstanding biological resources, describing the monument as “in the heart of perhaps the richest floristic region in the Intermountain West,” spanning five life zones and supporting diverse, rare, and endemic populations of plants and a diversity of animals, as well as unusual and diverse soils that support communities of mosses, lichens, and cyanobacteria. In addition, the proclamation describes the vast opportunities for additional scientific research and discovery within the monument. Grand Staircase-Escalante has become the focus of a multi-disciplinary study of its large landscape for the benefit of curre…