UTAH — President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on September 22, 2025, to reduce the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. The orders shrank Bears Ears National Monument to approximately 121,000 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to approximately 182,000 acres, removing about 3 million acres—roughly 90%—from the monuments’ combined original size.

The signing ceremony took place in the Oval Office at the White House and was attended by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, House Speaker Mike Schultz, and Utah’s all-Republican congressional delegation. The event was live-streamed on YouTube by the White House. As Trump signed the documents, he said, “Let's sign,” and later added, “This is very nice. I'm very happy about this. And better than the first time.” While signing the second order, he remarked, “Almost 3 million acres, going to be well taken care of now.”

Trump also claimed during the ceremony that the previous monument designations severely restricted public access, stating, “You can't do anything. You can't go hunting. You can't go fishing. You can't do anything. You can virtually not even walk on it.” That assertion is factually incorrect; current rules under national monument designations allow hunting, fishing, and recreational access on most lands. Deputy Interior Secretary Kate MacGregor responded to Trump’s claim by saying, “That's exactly right, sir,” although federal land management policies contradict that characterization. Trump further said, “They took the land from the people quite honestly. We’re giving it back,” and described the action as “very desperately needed” and “very unfair to the people of Utah,” asserting that “fairness has been brought back.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox issued a prepared statement supporting the reductions, saying, “We deeply value these natural, cultural, and scientific treasures.” He added, “The question has never been whether to protect them, but how to protect them best.” Cox argued that “the historic landmarks and other nationally significant resources remain under federal protection, while allowing agencies to direct limited resources toward caring for these specific sites rather than millions of surrounding acres.” He emphasized that “monument designations are supposed to be the smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities,” calling the large original boundaries inconsistent with that principle and “bigger than the state of Delaware.” Cox concluded, “This is a big day for Utah,” and stated, “We need to rightsize these monuments.”

Sen. Mike Lee, who has long opposed the expansive boundaries, stated that the Antiquities Act has been “abused” by turning “larger than necessary swaths of land into monuments.” He said Trump’s action “is right-sizing it to bring it in compliance with what the law says.” Lee, who began conversations to shrink the monuments shortly after Trump’s 2024 reelection, added, “These are 3 million acres. As I explained to President Biden, that's two Delawares.” Rep. Celeste Maloy said both monuments were created “over the unanimous opposition of Utah's federal delegation, our governors, county commissioners, the locals who were worried about losing multiple uses on these federal lands.” Lee and Maloy previously crafted a proposal to repeal Biden-era management standards for Grand Staircase-Escalante, but it stalled. Maloy also filed a joint resolution of disapproval to undo the current resource management plan, but it died after missing a key Senate deadline.

Critics, particularly tribal leaders and conservation advocates, condemned the move. Autumn Gillard, inter-tribal coalition coordinator and a descendant of the Cedar Band of Paiutes, said in a prepared statement, “Our Tribes were not informed of or asked about this decision, and that's unacceptable.” She added, “The federal government must honor its Trust and Treaty obligations to our Tribes — it is not optional,” and called the action “a direct strike against the federal government's duty to consult with Tribes.” Davina Smith-Idjesa, a Navajo Nation citizen and co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said, “From a Navajo perspective, Bears Ears is not simply a piece of federal public land.” She described it as “a living cultural site that holds our histories, our ceremonies, our traditional foods and medicines and our ancestors’ footprints.”

Utah House Minority Leader Angela Romero, the first and only enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe to serve in the Utah House, said in a statement, “This back-and-forth with every administration has to stop.” She added, “These lands deserve the protections that come with national monument status.” Public opinion in Utah remains divided: a 2024 poll conducted for the Grand Canyon Trust found that 71% of Utah voters supported keeping Bears Ears as a national monument and 74% supported the same for Grand Staircase-Escalante. However, a 2023 Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll showed that about 42% of Utahns supported keeping Bears Ears at its original size, while 26% opposed it.

Why It Matters

The reductions reverse protections restored in 2021 by former President Joe Biden, who had reinstated the monuments to their original sizes after Trump’s first-term cuts in 2017. In that earlier action, Trump reduced Bears Ears from approximately 1.35 million acres to roughly 228,000 acres and Grand Staircase-Escalante from approximately 1.87 million acres to about 1 million acres. Those 2017 reductions prompted lawsuits from tribes, conservation groups, and businesses, which were put on hold in early 2021 and remained pending when Biden restored the monuments. The current action reignites legal and political tensions over the scope of presidential authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to designate—but not abolish—national monuments to protect lands of historic or scientific interest.

Bears Ears, designated by President Barack Obama in 2016, was the first national monument established at the request of tribal nations and honors the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, and Uintah-Ouray Ute tribes. Grand Staircase-Escalante was designated by President Bill Clinton in 1996. While the monuments contain uranium deposits and coal reserves, respectively, the Bureau of Land Management previously found both areas have little oil and gas potential. National monument status prohibits new mining claims, oil and gas leasing, coal exploration, and new commercial infrastructure, but allows existing recreational uses. Doug Burgum currently serves as Interior Secretary overseeing federal land management.