Peter Eckhardt is a writer and outdoorsman based in South Portland.

As Mainers, the natural world is key to everything we hold important: we shape our identities with it, it builds our economies, even our license plates bear its symbols.

We hunt and we hike, we canoe and we camp. With vast wilderness in places like Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument and Acadia National Park, we are lucky that our wild is protected for future generations of Mainers and non-Mainers alike.

Across the Rockies, Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee comes from a state with similarly immense natural beauty, swapping coastlines for canyons. However, Lee’s time as a senator is notable for his assaults on the wild. Lee’s hustle to destroy American public land range from a 2025 attempt to mandate the sale of 11 different states’ public land to private interest to undoing Glen Canyon National Recreation Area’s conservation-focused vehicle management plan.

It’s no surprise why — since his election in 2012, Lee has received over $250,000 from the fossil fuel lobby.

Lee’s pattern of attack has had mixed success in years past, but it’s been gaining steam. Recently, Lee supported usage of the little-used Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the U.S. Forest Service recommendation to pause mining upstream of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The legislation was successful, and the wild heritage of northern Minnesota is now ripe for the spoiling.

Lee now seeks to use the CRA to overturn the management plan of Utah’s Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Established in 1996, the monument protects over 1.8 million acres of desert, river and mountain for recreation, conservation and traditional indigenous usage.

Lee would tell you that his plans keep markets free and people employed, but his own constituents disagree. The monument has become popular: according to the Grand
Canyon Trust, 74% of Utahns want the monument protected under its current management plan, and a similar majority want public lands managed to protect history and conservation.

A Colorado College study found that 91% of Americans agree that existing national monument protections should be kept in place. Regardless, Lee and Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy introduced legislation to remove the current plan and open the area to resource extraction interests.

So why should you care?

On the vote to overturn the protections for the Boundary Waters, Maine’s own Susan Collins was one of only two Senate Republicans to break with the party and attempt to keep protections in place. Unlike Lee, Collins seems to care about America’s public lands. Collins has worked to protect Maine’s public lands in the past, reaching across the aisle in 2022 with Sen. Angus King to expand Katahdin Woods and Waters.

However, if Collins wants to keep her seat this November, it’s important she ensures our public lands stay protected regardless of where they are.

If Lee’s bill to use the CRA to overturn Grand Staircase’s management plan passes, it sets a dangerous precedent that could be used to strip protections in national monuments all across the country, including here in Maine.

Keep Grand Staircase-Escalante, and by extension all national monuments, protected, and call your local branch of Susan Collins’ office to ensure these treasures exist in the future.