Trump Shrinks Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Monuments, Reigniting Legal Fight Over Antiquities Act

President Donald Trump on Monday signed proclamations sharply reducing the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, cutting each by about 90% and reopening a long-running legal fight over whether a president can shrink monuments created by a predecessor.

The actions, signed at the White House, would reduce Bears Ears to about 121,100 acres from roughly 1.36 million acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante to about 181,500 acres from about 1.87 million acres, according to early figures reported by The Associated Press, Reuters and The Washington Post. Utah officials, including Gov. Spencer Cox and the state’s two U.S. senators, attended the event, Reuters reported.

Trump cast the move as a return of control to Utah and to people who use the land. “They took the land from the people quite honestly. We’re giving it back,” Trump said, according to AP. Reuters reported he also called the move “very dramatic and very important” for Utah and the country. The administration said the reduced monument boundaries would ease federal restrictions and allow broader use for activities including grazing, motorized recreation, logging and mineral development.

Utah leaders praised the action. The governor’s office said it welcomed the changes, aligning with the state’s long-running argument that monument designations had placed too much land under federal limits.

Opposition was immediate. Conservation groups including the National Parks Conservation Association, Earthjustice and the Sierra Club condemned the move and said they would challenge it in court or otherwise fight it. “President Trump’s order to slash protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante is both a betrayal to the American people and illegal,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association. “No president has the authority to erase or shrink a national monument with the stroke of a pen, and we will continue to fight this at every step.”

Tribal leaders and representatives of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition also objected, saying they were not properly consulted and warning that the action threatens sacred, cultural and archaeological sites. That concern has long been central to the fight over Bears Ears, which tribes view as a protected cultural landscape, not simply a recreation area or resource base.

The proclamations are the latest turn in a years-long political and legal struggle over two of the most contested public land designations in the West. President Bill Clinton created Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996. President Barack Obama created Bears Ears in 2016. Trump sharply reduced both monuments in 2017, and President Joe Biden restored them to larger boundaries in 2021.

At the center of the dispute is the Antiquities Act, the 1906 law that gives presidents power to create national monuments to protect historic landmarks and other significant natural, cultural or scientific objects on federal land. What remains unsettled is whether that same law allows a president to later reduce a monument’s size. Legal observers have said Trump’s latest move is likely to test that question again.

The uncertainty was underscored by a June 23 opinion from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which remanded aspects of earlier monument litigation and discussed the scope of presidential authority. The ruling did not settle the broader issue, but it highlighted that the law in this area remains unresolved.

With the new proclamations now signed, another round of lawsuits appears all but certain. The clash over Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante is once again poised to put the limits of presidential monument power before the courts, while deepening a fight over who should control some of Utah’s most culturally and politically charged landscapes.