Trump Reduces Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Monuments by About 90 Percent Each

President Donald Trump on July 13 issued proclamations reducing the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah by about 90 percent each. He signed the documents at a White House event the same day. The monuments originally spanned more than 3.2 million acres combined.

President Bill Clinton established Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996. President Barack Obama created Bears Ears in 2016. Trump reduced both during his first term, and former President Joe Biden later reversed those cuts.

Bears Ears contains ancestral villages, ceremonial and burial sites, and hundreds of thousands of objects of cultural and scientific significance. It is jointly managed under an agreement between tribal nations and federal agencies. The area holds uranium deposits.

Grand Staircase-Escalante holds large coal reserves. “They took the land from the people quite honestly,” Trump said at the signing event. ” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, standing next to Trump, said the day marked a positive step for the state.

“These monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities,” Cox stated. Davina Smith-Idjesa, a Navajo Nation citizen and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, called the reduction heartbreaking. “From a Navajo perspective, Bears Ears is not simply a piece of federal public land,” she said.

Bears Ears was the first national monument protected at the request of tribal nations. The 1906 Antiquities Act grants presidents authority to protect sites deemed historic, archaeologically significant or culturally important.