Trump signs EO shrinking monuments, angering environmentalists
July 14 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has signed a pair of executive orders shrinking two southern Utah national monuments by more than a million acres each, sparking anger from environmentalists who say the moves will open the formerly protected lands to exploration.
The executive orders reduce the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument from 1.87 million acres to about 181,500 acres and the Bears Ears National Monument from 1.36 million acres to 121,100 acres. Both are located in redrock country.
Trump signed the orders on Monday in the Oval Office while surrounded by Utah’s Republican leadership, including Gov. Spencer Cox, Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis and several GOP House representatives.
“This is a big day for Utah,” Cox said.
The executive orders mark the latest development in the nearly decade-long tug-of-war over the size of the monuments, though Republicans have opposed Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and its 1.7-million-acre boundary since President Bill Clinton designated it in 1996. The Bears Ears National Monument was designated by President Barack Obama in late 2016.
During his first term, Trump shrunk both monuments — Bears Ears by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante by almost half — only for President Joe Biden to restore both of them to their previous boundaries in 2021.
Republicans, including Cox, argue that the monuments violate the Antiquities Act, which limits the designation to the smallest parcel of land necessary for the proper care and management of the objects to be protected. In a White House fact sheet on the executive orders, the Trump administration argues that the term “objects of historic or scientific interest” has been stretched to include landscapes and biodiversity.
“Now, we care. We definitely care about protecting these antiquities and will continue to do so. The problem is with these giant monument designations, there are resources that come with those,” Cox said at the White House press conference.
“We’re grateful that the president has made a determination that we need to rightsize these monuments.”
He added that this will not remove protections already in place, but will make “the monuments more manageable so that we have the resources necessary to continue to protect these antiquities.”
Trump criticized the size of the monuments, saying the designations prevented the public from using the land.
“You can’t go hunting. You can’t go fishing. You can’t do anything. You can virtually not even walk on it,” he said, though the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources states that people can hunt and fish in both monuments.
Environmental groups have been fighting to maintain the size of both monuments since Trump originally shrunk them, pointing to the fact that Grand Staircase-Escalante was designated due to its wide array of scientific and historic resources and Bears Ears was created following a proposal by five Tribal Nations.
Scott Braden, executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said Monday’s executive orders make clear that Utah is the “epicenter of Republican efforts to dismantle and obliterate America’s system of public lands.”
“These two landscapes deserve to be protected for current and future generations of Utahns and Americans, not opened to exploitation,” Braden said in a statement, adding that the group would challenge the executive orders in court.
“We are confident that President Trump’s reckless and unlawful acts will be rejected and the monuments restored.”
According to the Center for Western Priorities, the executive orders may open the land formerly part of the monuments for sale or lease to oil, gas, mining and logging companies within 60 days.
“The people of Utah and the entire country have spoken with one voice: These lands belong to all of us, not Mike Lee, President Trump or the mining companies his kids are in business with,” CWP Executive Director Aaron Weiss said in a statement.
