Trump slashes Utah national monuments, opens land to development
Trump cut Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by more than 90%, reopening land to grazing, logging and off-road use. Tribes and conservation groups are heading back to court.
Donald Trump on Monday signed proclamations that shrank two of Utah’s best-known national monuments by more than 90%, a move that reopened vast stretches of southern Utah to grazing, motorized recreation, logging and other development. The White House announced the reductions.
The order cut Bears Ears National Monument to 121,100 acres from 1.36 million acres and reduced Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to 181,500 acres from 1.87 million acres. The White House called the changes “common sense land use.” The new boundaries stripped away protections for landscapes long tied to conservation, wildlife habitat and Native American heritage.
Grand Staircase-Escalante was originally established by President Bill Clinton on September 18, 1996, in part to prevent development of significant coal reserves on the Kaiparowits Plateau. Bears Ears was designated by President Barack Obama on December 28, 2016, after Tribal Nations asked for the monument’s creation. Bears Ears protects one of the richest cultural landscapes in the United States, with thousands of archaeological sites and places of spiritual significance.
Lands removed from the monument boundaries are no longer covered by the same federal protections that had limited extractive uses, including the expansion of grazing, off-road vehicle travel, logging and resource development. For conservation groups, the shrinkage raises the risk of damage to fragile desert ecosystems, while for supporters it opens more acreage to ranching, recreation and energy-related activity.
Earthjustice will challenge the proclamations in court and called them an illegal attack on protected land. During the first Trump administration, attempts to strip monument protections from nearly 90% of Bears Ears and about half of Grand Staircase-Escalante were later stayed after President Joe Biden restored both monuments in 2021.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently sent Utah’s challenge to Biden’s restoration back to district court.
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