Trump signs orders cutting two Utah national monuments by about 90 percent

President Donald Trump signed executive orders reducing two national monuments in Utah to roughly one-tenth of their current size, opening millions of acres of protected land to fossil fuel extraction and mining.

Trump signed the proclamations at a White House event with Republican officials, including Utah Governor Spencer Cox and two Utah senators. Trump said the action was important for Utah and for the country.

Cox said monument designations are meant to cover the smallest area needed to protect antiquities and argued that multi-million-acre monuments larger than Delaware did not meet that standard. He also said antiquities would continue to be protected.

The reductions reopen a long-running dispute over Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Trump first targeted the two monuments in 2017, during his first term. President Joe Biden restored them to their original boundaries in 2021. The earlier Trump rollback cut Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante by 45 percent. The new orders go further, cutting Bears Ears by 91 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante by 90 percent, according to the report.

The executive orders listed critical minerals and energy reserves that they described as important to US resource independence and national security. AFP reported that the move follows other steps reducing protections for public lands and wildlife, including a rule finalized last week that redefined “harm” under the Endangered Species Act to exclude habitat destruction.

Grand Staircase-Escalante covers 1.9 million acres and was established as a monument in 1996 under President Bill Clinton. Bears Ears covers 1.35 million acres and was proclaimed in 2016 under President Barack Obama on the basis of cultural sites sacred to Indigenous tribes.

Opponents argue that Trump’s actions are illegal under the Antiquities Act of 1906. Thomas Delehanty, a lawyer for Earthjustice, told AFP that the law lets presidents create national monuments but does not give them the same power to reduce or eliminate them, which he said only Congress can do through a new law.

The Department of Justice issued an opinion last year saying presidents can shrink monuments and abolish them. Earthjustice sued the first Trump administration over the issue on behalf of conservation groups, and Delehanty said the group was ready to reopen that litigation or file a new case.

Republican-controlled Utah has a separate ongoing case challenging Biden’s restoration of the monuments. Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, told AFP that public lands draw tourism, support economic growth in remote regions and act as a renewable economic resource.