On Monday morning, the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments spanned over 3 million acres of public lands in southern Utah, safeguarding some of the nation’s most isolated landscapes and numerous archaeological sites sacred to local tribes. By that evening, President Donald Trump had reduced the size of the monuments to just 302,600 acres.
The executive orders, which drastically reduced the monuments and their protections, echo actions from Trump’s first term that were later overturned by President Joe Biden. However, these latest reductions are more extensive than before.
Back in December 2017, Trump signed proclamations to shrink Bears Ears National Monument from 1.3 million acres to approximately 228,000 acres, an 85 percent reduction. Grand Staircase-Escalante was nearly halved from 1.9 million acres to about 1 million acres. The latest orders have reduced these monuments to less than a quarter of their previously diminished sizes.
Accompanied by Utah Republicans, Trump claimed that the new restrictions rendered it nearly impossible to hunt, fish, or even walk on the monuments, a statement that is inaccurate. Both monuments remain accessible to visitors, including for hunting and fishing.
Trump’s executive orders will take effect in 60 days. These orders, which shrink the monuments’ boundaries, are intended to align with the administration’s goals for public lands, particularly opening them up to resource extraction.
The orders claim to return power to local communities, even as they disband an inter-tribal working group for Bears Ears that led co-stewardship efforts at the monument. This group was a result of years of advocacy by local tribes. Tribal officials stated they were not consulted regarding the reduction of the monuments.
“[Trump is] saying the quiet part out loud. He’s being honest: I’m doing this so that we can mine and drill and graze cows,” said John Ruple, a law professor and program director at the University of Utah’s Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment. “We’ll see if the American people think those are the best uses of national monuments, and we’ll see if courts agree with that, too.”
Davina Smith-Idjesa, a member of the Navajo Nation and part of both monuments’ inter-tribal coalitions, said reading the proclamations was a reminder “of genocide and that tribes are expendable” in the U.S.
She explained that uranium mining in the Four Corners region had left her family members sick and dead, and now there is a looming threat of these sacred areas being opened up for extraction once again.
“Bears Ears is at my back door,” she shared during a press conference on Tuesday morning. “This is not a political talking point for me. This is home. My ancestors knew this land. My family knows this land. I know where our people go to pray, to gather medicines, to gather food and to heal. This is our grocery store, our medicine cabinet, our classroom, our church. And I need people to understand: You cannot take a pin, draw a line through the landscape, and tell us what remains should be enough.”
Ruple noted there is little political advantage to this decision, and polling consistently shows Americans back the monuments and the protection of public lands. Attacks on public lands, including Grand Staircase-Escalante, have repeatedly failed in recent years.
According to Ruple, the Antiquities Act gives presidents the authority to establish monuments, but not to retract them. That authority lies with Congress.
These executive orders follow a June ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that overturned a district court’s dismissal of a lawsuit from the state of Utah challenging the Biden administration’s restoration of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. The lawsuit also disputes the powers granted by the Antiquities Act of 1906, which was signed by President Teddy Roosevelt and used to protect the Grand Canyon before it became a national park.
“If you go and eviscerate these two monuments, now I suspect we’re going to see the Department of Justice go into the district court and say, ‘Look, this case is moot. The monuments have been reduced by every inch that were restored and the Biden proclamations have now been undone,’” Ruple said.
Environmental groups and tribal leaders who have long fought for the protection of the two monuments pledged to continue their efforts. Both monuments played a critical role in the establishment of Bears Ears, which is the first and only national monument co-managed by the federal government and local tribes.
The last time the Trump administration reduced the monuments, Earthjustice, representing a coalition of environmental groups and tribes, sued over the decision. The organization has vowed to do so again.
The executive orders were anticipated. Last March, the Trump administration announced plans to eliminate California’s Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands national monuments before removing references to that decision from a White House fact sheet. Then in June, the Department of Justice issued an opinion asserting that the president has the authority to review and eliminate national monuments.
Project 2025, the policy roadmap for a second Trump administration coordinated by the conservative Heritage Foundation, has advocated for reducing the size of these and other national monuments and has even suggested repealing the Antiquities Act of 1906.
During a press call on Tuesday in response to the executive orders, Democratic members of Congress criticized the proclamations for prioritizing public lands for mining over the interests of the American people. They expressed concern that other protected areas could be targeted next and that cultural and religious sites could face vandalism.
“This is a trend coming from Donald Trump and from this administration,” said Senator Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat from New Mexico. “While these monuments are in Utah, they belong to all of us across the United States.”
“The administration is on the wrong side of history here, ignoring the voices of Tribal Nations, local communities, and the millions of Americans who want these places protected for future generations,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, Wilderness Society president and former director of the Bureau of Land Management under the Biden administration, in a statement. “As our nation marks 250 years, these public lands should be handed down, not over to drilling and mining interests.”
