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Interior Department cancels proposal to sell former monument land in Utah

The U.S. Department of the Interior has backed away from its proposal to sell off about 1,600 acres of public land in Utah that once was part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Credit: Scott G Winterton/The Deseret News via Colorado Politics

The U.S. Department of the Interior has backed away from its proposal to sell off about 1,600 acres of public land in Utah that once was part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

The proposal kicked up a firestorm of protest from environmentalists.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported Friday that Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt rescinded the proposal.

It was contained in a management plan for hundreds of thousands of acres of land that President Donald Trump had ordered removed from Grand Staircase and another Utah monument, Bears Ears.

The Tribune said Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had not been informed of the proposal and learned about it in the news media.

He “was not happy about it,” an Interior official told the newspaper.

Read more at Colorado Politics: https://bit.ly/2wn5gUP

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