WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday dramatically reducing the size of Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, cutting their combined protected area by more than 90%.
According to the White House, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument will shrink from about 1.87 million acres to approximately 181,500 acres, while Bears Ears National Monument will be reduced from about 1.36 million acres to roughly 121,100 acres.
Together, the monuments will decrease from more than 3.2 million acres to just over 300,000 acres.
“They took the land from the people quite honestly,” Trump said during the signing ceremony at the White House. “We’re giving it back.”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who attended the event, welcomed the decision, saying monument designations should cover “the smallest area possible to protect the antiquities.”
Grand Staircase-Escalante was established by President Bill Clinton in 1996 under the Antiquities Act, while President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears as a national monument in 2016.
The monuments contain archaeological sites, ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and scenic canyon landscapes. Utah officials have argued that reducing the monuments could allow greater access to mineral resources, including uranium and coal deposits.
The decision drew criticism from Native American leaders.
Davina Smith-Idjesa, co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and a citizen of the Navajo Nation, called the move “heartbreaking.”
She said Bears Ears is “not simply a piece of federal public land” but “a living cultural site” that preserves tribal history, ceremonies, traditional foods and medicines, and ancestral heritage.
Bears Ears was the first U.S. national monument created following a request from tribal nations and is jointly managed by federal agencies and tribal representatives.