President Donald Trump on Monday sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, undoing protections established by his Democratic predecessors on public lands that among many Native Americans.
and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah have ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and scenic canyons, as well as coal and uranium deposits that want made available for development.
Trump, a Republican, issued proclamations under the Antiquities Act to reduce their size by about 90% each. He took similar actions during his first term, but those were reversed by , a Democrat.
The latest move comes as Trump and other Republicans have drastically reshaped the management of vast taxpayer-owned lands concentrated in Western states. Trump administration officials and congressional Republicans have sought to , and on public lands, while for imperiled species and rolling back .
鈥淭hey took the land from the people quite honestly,鈥� Trump said at a signing event at the White House Monday. 鈥淲e鈥檙e giving it back.鈥�
President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, established Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, and President Barack Obama, also a Democrat, created Bears Ears National Monument in 2016 under the Antiquities Act. The 1906 law gives presidents the powers to protect sites considered historic, archaeologically significant or culturally important.
Davina Smith-Idjesa, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said tribal leaders had braced for a reduction since Trump was elected to a second term. She said it was 鈥渉eartbreaking鈥� and accused federal officials of sidestepping their legal responsibility to consult with tribal nations that would be impacted.
鈥淔rom a Navajo perspective, Bears Ears is not simply a piece of federal public land,鈥� Smith-Idjesa said. 鈥淭his is a living cultural site that holds our histories, our ceremonies, our traditional foods and medicines and our ancestors鈥� footprints.鈥�
鈥楤ig day for Utah鈥�
Utah officials had long fought against the monument designations and argued that the state should be in charge of controlling its own lands. Trump in his first term , calling their creation a 鈥渕assive land grab.鈥� Combined they spanned (13 million hectares), an area nearly the size of Connecticut.
Trump reduced them Monday to less than 303,000 acres (123,000 hectares) combined.
That’s a greater reduction than his first term, when he left Grand Staircase Escalante at 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) and Bears Ears at 213,000 acres (86,000 hectares).
鈥淭his is a big day for Utah,鈥� Utah Gov. Spencer Cox as he stood next to Trump at the White House. 鈥淭hese monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities.鈥�
Bears Ears was the first national monument created at the request of tribal nations that consider the land sacred. The landscape contains ancestral villages, ceremonial and burial sites and features in some tribes鈥� creation and migration stories. Its designation honored five tribes in the region 鈥� Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute and Uintah-Ouray Ute.
Home to hundreds of thousands of objects of cultural and scientific significance, Bears Ears is jointly managed by an agreement between tribal nations and federal agencies.
Grand Staircase-Escalante consists of cliffs, canyons, natural arches and archaeological sites, including rock paintings. It holds large coal reserves, while the Bears Ears area has uranium.
The national monument designation provides sweeping protections not just for significant geological features or artifacts but also for the surrounding landscape, banning drilling, mining and new construction nearby. Proponents of Trump鈥檚 move to downsize say the protective boundaries stretch too far and hinder mining for critical minerals.
Trump asserted Monday that people can not hunt, fish or 鈥渧irtually not even walk鈥� on the monuments. That’s false: Hunting, fishing, camping and other recreation are permitted under state and federal regulations, said Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a conservation group.
Biden designated or expanded and had a goal to conserve at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
Trump鈥檚 policies are largely the opposite: He wants to tap into the natural resource wealth of federal lands that total more than 100,000 square miles (260,000 square kilometers) and offshore areas under federal control, such as in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.
That鈥檚 drawn backlash from Democrats who warn of the wholesale disposal of treasured landscapes for commercial gain.
鈥淭oday鈥檚 executive action is another chapter in this administration鈥檚 war on the West,” Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said Monday. He added that Trump was 鈥渢urning the Antiquities Act on its head.”
Land sale proposals fell flat
Trump Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last year that federal officials would review and consider redrawing as part of a push to .
Trump in his current term has used proclamations to lift within expansive marine monuments in areas of the Pacific Ocean and in the Atlantic Ocean off the New England coast. Those monuments were created by Democratic and Republican administrations. The effort to boost the fishing industry, which has been challenged in court, marks a dramatic shift in federal policy by prioritizing commercial interests over efforts to allow the fish supply to increase.
Some Republicans have tried to sell or transfer federal lands to states or other entities. Those efforts have largely fallen flat: A push by in the House to sell public lands ran into bipartisan opposition, while another proposal by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah to sell (8,300 square kilometers) of federal lands was removed from .
The U.S. Supreme Court last year turned back a lawsuit from Utah officials who sought to of public land within the state from the federal government.
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Hannah Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.
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