President Donald Trump on Monday slashed the size of two massive Utah national monuments by roughly 90%, opening more than 2.9 million acres of federally controlled land to potential energy development and restoring state authority over resources that include coal and uranium deposits.
Trump issued proclamations under the Antiquities Act to reduce Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, reversing protections his Democratic predecessors had imposed on lands that contain ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and archaeological sites. The combined monuments had spanned more than 3.2 million acres, nearly the size of Connecticut. They're now less than 303,000 acres combined.
Returning Control to States
"They took the land from the people quite honestly," Trump said at a White House signing event. "We're giving it back." Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called it "a big day for Utah," noting that monument designations are supposed to cover "the smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities."
The reductions exceed even Trump's first-term cuts, when he left Grand Staircase-Escalante at 1 million acres and Bears Ears at 213,000 acres. State officials have long sought access to the areas' mineral wealth, arguing that sweeping federal protections lock up resources critical to American energy independence and economic development.
President Bill Clinton established Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument 30 years ago in 1996, and President Barack Obama created Bears Ears National Monument a decade ago in 2016 under the Antiquities Act. The 1906 law gives presidents the power to protect sites considered historic, archaeologically significant or culturally important. Monument designation provides sweeping protections not just for geological features or artifacts but also for the surrounding landscape, banning drilling, mining and new construction nearby.
Tribal Opposition and Federal Authority
Davina Smith-Idjesa, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, called the move "heartbreaking" and accused federal officials of sidestepping their legal responsibility to consult with tribal nations that would be affected. Bears Ears was the first national monument created at the request of tribal nations that consider the land sacred, honoring five tribes in the region: Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute and Uintah-Ouray Ute.
"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."
Proponents of Trump's move say the protective boundaries stretch too far and hinder mining for critical minerals. Trump asserted Monday that people cannot hunt, fish or "virtually not even walk" on the monuments, but Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said that was false and that hunting, fishing, camping and other recreation are permitted under state and federal regulations.
Reversing Biden's Conservation Push
The move comes as Trump and other Republicans have reshaped the management of vast taxpayer-owned lands concentrated in Western states. Trump administration officials and congressional Republicans have sought to expand drilling, mining and logging on public lands, while removing protections for imperiled species and rolling back rules for conservation.
Trump's policies are largely the opposite of President Joe Biden's, who 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 wants to tap into the natural resource wealth of federal lands that total more than 100,000 square miles and offshore areas under federal control, such as in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.
Trump Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last year that federal officials would review and consider redrawing monument boundaries as part of a push to expand U.S. energy production. Trump in his current term has also used proclamations to lift commercial fishing prohibitions within expansive marine monuments in the Pacific Ocean and in the Atlantic Ocean off the New England coast.
Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said, "Today's executive action is another chapter in this administration's war on the West." He added that Trump was "turning the Antiquities Act on its head."
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. 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.
Some Republicans have tried to sell or transfer federal lands to states or other entities, but 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 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.
Why This Matters:
The debate over these Utah monuments crystallizes a fundamental question about federal power: who should control the West's vast public lands and the resources beneath them? Trump's reductions open access to coal and uranium deposits that could strengthen domestic energy production and reduce dependence on foreign sources of critical minerals. But they also demonstrate the instability created when presidents use executive authority to repeatedly expand and contract protections on the same lands. The Antiquities Act gives presidents broad unilateral power, and Trump's reductions mark the largest rollback of monument protections in modern history. State officials argue they're better positioned than Washington bureaucrats to balance conservation with economic development. Yet the legal questions about presidential authority to reduce monuments remain unsettled, and the back-and-forth across administrations creates uncertainty for both industry and conservation interests. The clash also highlights tensions between tribal sovereignty claims and state resource management, with five tribal nations losing co-management authority over lands they consider sacred.