On December 28, 2016, President Barack Obama designated over 1.5 million acres for two new national monuments -- Bears Ears in Utah and Gold Butte in Nevada. The Bears Ears monument covers 1.35 million acres--a region larger than the state of Delaware, and the Gold Butte monument covers about 300,000 acres. Obama's decision limits access and activities on vast amounts of land, reducing the ability of state lawmakers and the citizens to have a say over how these public lands are used. The federal government controls 25 percent of all land in the United States--50 percent of land west of the Rocky Mountains and 85 percent of the land in Nevada.
