On Monday, July 13th, 2026, former President Donald Trump approved a significant reduction in the size of two national monuments in Utah—Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante—each losing close to 1.5 million acres. The move, announced during an executive order signing event at the White House, reverses protections established by former presidents and opens the land to corporate developers and the oil and gas industry.

Trump stated, “They took the land from the people quite honestly. We’re giving it back.” The monuments, located in southern Utah, are known for ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, scenic canyons, and deposits of coal and uranium that state officials seek to develop.

This marks the second time Trump has reduced these monument designations; a similar action in 2017 was later reversed by the Biden administration.

Utah's Republican Governor Spencer Cox, who joined Trump at the signing, defended the reductions by citing the Antiquities Act, saying the monument designations should be the smallest area possible to protect antiquities and that the current multimillion-acre monuments exceed that scope.

However, the decision has faced legal and cultural opposition. Heidi McIntosh, managing attorney for Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountain office, called the reductions illegal, stating, “The Antiquities Act authorizes presidents to designate national monuments, not to destroy them.”

From a tribal perspective, Davina Smith-Idjesa, a Navajo Nation citizen and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, emphasized the cultural significance of Bears Ears, saying, “From a Navajo perspective, 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.” She noted that tribal leaders had anticipated such reductions since Trump’s re-election.

The reductions have reignited debates over land use, indigenous rights, and environmental protection in the United States.

Sources