Trump Cuts Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Monuments by Nearly 3 Million Acres Combined

President Trump signed executive proclamations Monday shrinking Utah's Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, cutting a combined total of nearly 3 million acres, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. Trump said during the White House signing event, as reported by The Guardian, that the monuments would each lose "close to a million and a half acres."

"They took the land from the people quite honestly," Trump told reporters. "We're giving it back."

This is the second time Trump has done this to these exact monuments. He shrank them in 2017 during his first term, cutting Bears Ears by 87% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by 45%, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. President Biden restored protections for both monuments in 2021. Now they're being cut again, this time by a combined total of nearly 3 million acres, per the Center for Biological Diversity's tally.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, stood with Trump at the signing and defended the move on legal grounds. "We believe that under the Antiquities Act, it's very clear that these monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area possible to protect the antiquities, and these multimillion-acre monuments that are bigger than the state of Delaware certainly do not fit that designation," Cox said, according to The Guardian.

That's the core argument from Utah's side, and it's not a fringe one. The Antiquities Act gives presidents the power to grant legal protections to sites considered historic, archaeologically significant or culturally important. Grand Staircase-Escalante, created by Bill Clinton in 1996, and Bears Ears, created by Barack Obama in 2016 under that law, are both sprawling, multi-jurisdiction designations. Cox and other Utah officials have argued for years that both monuments went well beyond protecting specific sites and instead locked up huge swaths of land, including coal and uranium deposits state officials want opened for development.

What's actually in the monuments

Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante contain ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and scenic canyons considered sacred by several tribes, according to The Guardian. They also sit on coal and uranium reserves that Utah has pushed to develop for years. Combined, the two monuments span more than 3.2 million acres, an area nearly the size of Connecticut, per The Guardian.

The cuts land amid an active wildfire crisis in the same area. The Center for Biological Diversity noted the 106,000-acre Babylon Fire, burning inside Bears Ears, has become the largest wildfire in the country.

The legal fight, again

Earthjustice says it will take legal action to block the reductions. "President Trump's attack on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments is just as illegal today as it was in 2017," said Heidi McIntosh, managing attorney for Earthjustice's Rocky Mountain office, according to The Guardian. "The Antiquities Act authorizes presidents to designate national monuments, not to destroy them," she added, calling the proclamations "a slap to the face of public lands visitors across the country, as well as the local communities and tribes that have worked for years to protect these special places."

Davina Smith-Idjesa, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said tribal leaders had braced for a reduction since Trump was elected to a second term, calling it "heartbreaking" and accusing federal officials of sidestepping their legal responsibility to consult with tribal nations. "From a Navajo perspective, Bears Ears is not simply a piece of federal public land," she said. "This is a living cultural site that holds our histories, our ceremonies, our traditional foods and medicines and our ancestors' footprints."

The Center for Biological Diversity noted that Trump's 2017 actions were immediately challenged in court by tribes and conservation groups, and those lawsuits are still pending.