President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday slashing the size of two massive Utah national monuments by roughly 90 percent — returning nearly 3 million acres of locked-up federal land back to state control and energy production.
The order applies to Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, shrinking their combined footprint from 3 million acres down to just 300,000. Both monuments were created by Democratic presidents — Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase in 1996, Barack Obama created Bears Ears in 2016 — locking down vast stretches of land containing coal and uranium deposits.
“They took the land from the people quite honestly. We’re giving it back.”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox attended the White House signing and praised Trump’s action, arguing the original designations violated the intent of the Antiquities Act.
“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.
The move clears the way for fossil fuel extraction and mining on land that had been off-limits for decades. National monument protections ban drilling, mining, and construction across the designated landscape.
Local Native American groups have criticized the order, claiming both monument areas contain sacred sites including cliffside villages and petroglyphs tied to tribal history.
Davina Smith-Idjesa, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said Bears Ears “is not simply a piece of federal public land.”
“This is a living cultural site that holds our histories, our ceremonies, our traditional foods and medicines and our ancestors’ footprints,” Smith-Idjesa said.
Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have pushed aggressively to open federal land for U.S. energy production, clearing the way for mining and oil drilling in Alaska as well.
The original monument designations locked up land containing large deposits of coal and uranium — resources Trump argues should be available for American energy independence.
