President Donald Trump sharply reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah on Monday, reversing federal land grabs by previous administrations. Trump issued proclamations under the Antiquities Act, cutting each monument by approximately 90%. This move signals a significant shift in the management of vast taxpayer-owned lands, returning control closer to the people. “They took the land from the people quite honestly. We’re giving it back,” Trump declared at a White House signing event.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox lauded the decision, stating, “This is a big day for Utah.” He emphasized that monument designations should be the “smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities,” a principle often ignored by federal expansionists. These southern Utah lands contain ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, scenic canyons, archaeological sites, and rock paintings, alongside valuable coal and uranium deposits that state officials aim to make available for development.
Reclaiming National Lands
The Antiquities Act of 1906 grants presidents the power to protect sites deemed historic, archaeologically, or culturally important. President Bill Clinton first established Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument 30 years ago in 1996. President Barack Obama followed suit 10 years ago in 2016, creating Bears Ears National Monument. These designations provided sweeping protections, effectively banning drilling, mining, and new construction across millions of acres.
Combined, the two monuments previously spanned more than 3.2 million acres, an area nearly the size of Connecticut. Trump’s Monday action reduced them to less than 303,000 acres combined. This reduction is even more substantial than his first-term adjustments, which left Grand Staircase-Escalante at 1 million acres and Bears Ears at 213,000 acres. Proponents of Trump’s policy argue that the protective boundaries had stretched too far, hindering access to critical minerals and local economic opportunity.
Davina Smith-Idjesa, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, called the reduction “heartbreaking.” She accused federal officials of sidestepping their legal responsibility to consult with affected tribal nations. Bears Ears was notably the first national monument created at the request of tribal nations, honoring five tribes: Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Uintah-Ouray Ute. It is jointly managed by an agreement between tribal nations and federal agencies.
The Cost of Centralized Control
Trump asserted that people could not hunt, fish, or “virtually not even walk” on the monuments under the previous expansive designations. Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, countered this, stating that hunting, fishing, camping, and other recreation are permitted under existing state and federal regulations. The core of the debate remains federal control versus local access and economic utilization.
This move aligns with a broader effort by Trump and other Republicans to reshape the management of federal lands concentrated in Western states. Trump administration officials and congressional Republicans have consistently sought to expand drilling, mining, and logging on public lands, while simultaneously rolling back conservation rules and protections for imperiled species. Trump’s current term has also seen him use proclamations to lift commercial fishing prohibitions within expansive marine monuments in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
Elite Opposition
These policies stand in stark contrast to President Joe Biden’s agenda, which included designating or expanding over a dozen monuments and setting a goal to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. Trump, conversely, aims to tap into the natural resource wealth of federal lands, which total over 100,000 square miles, and offshore areas. Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico criticized Trump’s action as “another chapter in this administration’s war on the West,” claiming it was “turning the Antiquities Act on its head.”
Last year, Trump Interior Secretary Doug Burgum indicated that federal officials would review and consider redrawing monument boundaries as part of a push to expand U.S. energy production. Efforts by some Republican lawmakers to sell or transfer federal lands to states have largely faced bipartisan opposition, including a proposal by Utah Senator Mike Lee to sell more than 3,200 square miles of federal lands, which was removed from a major tax and spending bill. The U.S. Supreme Court also turned back a lawsuit from Utah officials seeking to wrest control of vast public lands within the state from the federal government last year. The struggle for local control against federal overreach continues.