Trump orders 90% size reductions to two national monuments in Utah

President Donald Trump signed proclamations on Monday shrinking two of Utah’s national monuments by over 90%. The first Trump administration previously cut Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 2017. The Biden administration later reversed those cuts.

As a result of Trump’s Monday proclamation, the two parks have gone from over 3 million acres to 302,500 acres, a larger cut than in 2017. The nearly 3 million acres freed up will remain as federal land, but will be available for purchase, mining claims, and mineral leasing on Sept. 11. The change has sparked intense controversy, especially among Native Americans.

What are Native Americans saying? Inter-tribal coalitions manage both parks. Bears Ears National Monument was founded on a first-of-its-kind cooperative agreement between tribes and federal land managers. Both parks also border reservations and touch the current homelands of the Ute Mountain Utes, Navajo, and Southern Paiute. Local tribes considered the land sacred, and still traveled there for hunting, gathering, and ceremonies.

Both intertribal coalitions deny being consulted before Trump signed the proclamations, according to Utah News Dispatch. Davina Smith-Idjesa, co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, a coalition of five tribes that manage the park, said the proclamation's disbanding of the coalition is something she is still trying to fully process, the Dispatch reported.

Trump said residents can’t hunt, fish, or even walk on the monument land, sparking criticism from some. Tribal citizens still used the land to hunt, gather food and medicine, and collect firewood, according to the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition. In an effort to refute Trump’s claim that the lands were inaccessible, one hiker posted a video that appeared to show dozens of clips of different sites she claimed she reached by walking.

What are Trump’s reasons? The proclamations argued that both sites violated the Antiquities Act's intended purpose of allowing a president to create national monuments on federal land at a size that could feasibly be taken care of.

He wrote that the size of Bear Ears’ grounds exceed the Act’s parameters. He also argued that the site’s artifacts, such as prehistoric campsites and pictographs, lack historical significance and are too common in the region to merit protection.

Trump made similar arguments for cutting down the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante, insisting that his revised borders would better align public land use with public interests, specifically around mining.

Both proclamations cited the monuments’ natural resources as critical to national security. Specific areas of both sites will remain protected for historic and scientific significance, including cliff dwellings, fossils, and other natural and historic features. However, only a small percentage of each monument’s hundreds of thousands of historic cultural sites fall within that protected area.

Are there any other voices? Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, applauded the changes, adding that the question was never whether to protect the land, but how to do it best.

Many botanists and naturalists pushed back on the proclamations. The land is full of dozens of extremely rare plants that will be extremely at risk if the land is opened to mining or development, said Utah Rare Plant Program botanist Zach Coury. Endangered species also make their home there, including the California condor.

Additionally, 74% of Utah voters favored protecting Grand Staircase-Escalante, and over 30 tribes supported protecting lands within Bears Ears. Colorado College’s 2025 poll showed that 82% of Utah residents supported leaving the original designations in place.