What to know about Trump’s push to shrink Utah national monuments
President Donald Trump announced Monday his intention to scale back the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, revisiting actions from his first term that were later reversed.
This move directly challenges proclamations by his predecessors, who deemed these sites worthy of preservation under the 1906 Antiquities Act, a law granting presidents power to protect areas of cultural, historic, or scientific interest.
The back-and-forth over these protected areas underscores how national monuments have become a significant flashpoint in the management of public lands.
While Trump made similar reductions during his first term, which were subsequently undone by his successor, he is not the first president to reduce the size of such monuments.
Here’s a look at U.S. national monuments and presidents who have created or reshaped them:
Trump made only a handful of Antiquities Act proclamations during his first term, including two that reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments. The sprawling Utah monuments include stunning natural features and sites sacred to some Native American tribes. Grand Staircase-Escalante also holds large coal reserves, while the Bears Ears area has uranium.
Trump also dedicated the 340-acre (138-hectare) Camp Nelson National Monument in Kentucky — a Union Army hospital and recruiting center for African American troops during the Civil War.
Biden’s first use of the act was to restore the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante. He cited their spiritual, cultural and prehistoric legacy.
Biden established 10 new monuments, among them the site of a 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois, and a monument honoring Mamie Till-Mobley and her son, Emmett, a Black teenager from Chicago who was tortured and killed in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. He also established monuments in the mountains of California and on a sacred Native American site near the Grand Canyon.
Proponents of the reductions say the protective boundaries stretch too far and hinder mining for essential minerals. Trump framed the move as giving back land to the people during a signing event at the White House on Monday.
The order was applauded by Utah officials, who have long argued that the state should be in charge of managing its own lands.
“The question has never been whether to protect them, but how to protect them best,” said Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican. His office assured the lands left out of the modified boundaries “remain protected under existing federal and state law.”
But some conservationists and citizens of local tribal nations warned the order opens the door to mining interests while disrespecting tribal co-stewardship. Bears Ears is jointly managed by an agreement between tribal nations and federal agencies.
“Our connection to this place cannot be erased by the stroke of a pen,” said Davina Smith-Idjesa, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition.
