President Donald Trump on Monday moved to significantly shrink two national monuments in Utah, rolling back federal protections for public lands that many Native American tribes consider sacred.
The Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah are known for ancient cliff dwellings, rock art, dramatic canyon landscapes and other cultural and natural features. The areas also contain coal and uranium deposits that Utah officials have sought to open to development.
Trump, a Republican, signed proclamations under the Antiquities Act cutting each monument by roughly 90%. He made similar reductions during his first term, though those changes were later reversed by Democratic President Joe Biden.
The decision is part of a broader Republican push to change how large stretches of federally owned land, much of it in the West, are managed. Trump administration officials and GOP lawmakers have advocated for more drilling, mining and logging on public lands, while also seeking to weaken conservation rules and reduce protections for threatened species.
“They took the land from the people quite honestly,” Trump said during a White House signing event Monday. “We’re giving it back.”
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was established in 1996 by Democratic President Bill Clinton, while Bears Ears National Monument was created in 2016 by Democratic President Barack Obama. Both designations were made under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to protect places with historic, archaeological or cultural significance.
Davina Smith-Idjesa, a Navajo Nation citizen and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said tribal leaders had expected the monument to be reduced after Trump won a second term. Still, she called Monday’s action “heartbreaking” and said federal officials failed to meet their legal obligation to consult with tribal nations that would be affected.
“From a Navajo perspective, Bears Ears is not simply a piece of federal public land,” Smith-Idjesa said. “This is a living cultural site that holds our histories, our ceremonies, our traditional foods and medicines and our ancestors’ footprints.”
Utah officials have long fought against the monument designation and have argued that the state should be in charge of controlling its own lands. Trump in his first term reduced their size, calling their creation a “massive land grab.” Combined they span more than 3.2 million acres (13 million hectares), an area nearly the size of Connecticut.
“This is a big day for Utah,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox as he stood next to Trump at the White House. “These monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities.”
Bears Ears was the first national monument protected at the request of tribal nations that consider the land sacred. The landscape contains ancestral villages, ceremonial and burial sites and features in some tribes’ creation and migration stories. Its designation honored five tribes in the region — Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute and Uintah-Ouray Ute.
Home to hundreds of thousands of objects of cultural and scientific significance, Bears Ears is jointly managed by an agreement between tribal nations and federal agencies.
Grand Staircase-Escalante consists of cliffs, canyons, natural arches and archaeological sites, including rock paintings. It holds large coal reserves, while the Bears Ears area has uranium.
The national monument designation provides sweeping protections not just for significant geological features or artifacts but also for the surrounding landscape, banning drilling, mining and new construction nearby. Proponents of Trump’s plan to downsize say the protective boundaries stretch too far and hinder mining for critical minerals.
Biden designated or expanded more than a dozen monuments and had a goal to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
Trump’s policies are largely the opposite: He wants to tap into the natural resource wealth of federal lands that total more than 100,000 square miles (260,000 square kilometers) and offshore areas under federal control, such as in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.
That’s drawn a sharp backlash from Democrats and conservationists, who warn of the wholesale disposal of treasured landscapes for commercial gain.
Trump Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had said last year that federal officials would review and consider redrawing the boundaries of national monuments as part of a push to expand U.S. energy production.
Trump’s in his current term has used proclamations to lift commercial fishing prohibitions within expansive marine monuments in areas of the Pacific Ocean and in the Atlantic Ocean off the New England coast. Those monuments were created by Democratic and Republican administrations. The effort to boost the fishing industry, which has been challenged in court, marks a dramatic shift in federal policy by prioritizing commercial interests over efforts to allow the fish supply to increase.
The Supreme Court has affirmed the president’s authority to create national monuments, and both Democrats and Republicans have used the Antiquities Act. But there’s been debate about whether Trump has the authority to change the boundaries of existing monuments.
Some Republicans have tried to sell or transfer federal lands to states or other entities. Those efforts have largely fallen flat: A push by some GOP lawmakers in the House to sell public lands ran into bipartisan opposition, while another proposal by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah to sell more than 3,200 square miles (8,300 square kilometers) of federal lands was removed from Republicans’ big tax and spending bill.
The U.S. Supreme Court last year turned back a lawsuit from Utah officials who sought to wrest control of vast areas of public land within the state from the federal government.
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Hannah Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.
