Trump Administration Moves to Slash National Monuments by Nearly 3 Million Acres

What happened: The Trump administration just attacked Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. It is attempting to shrink both monuments to less than 10% of their current size to enable drilling, mining, and other harmful activities on these iconic public lands.

Why it matters: National monuments are public lands that belong to all of us, including tribes and local communities that have spent years fighting to protect them. The dismantling of these monuments could set a precedent for similar attacks across the country. This is part of the administration’s broader plan to sell off and sell out public lands, stripping protections from natural, undeveloped landscapes to open them up for industrial development.

When the first Trump administration tried to revoke Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante’s protections, Earthjustice quickly stepped in alongside Tribes and other conservation groups and sued the president. We’re ready to challenge Trump’s renewed attack on national monuments again in court and will continue to defend the monuments until they are safe from these attacks.

Why these monuments are worth preserving

• Cultural heritage: The monuments contain ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, and burial sites that tribal nations have stewarded for generations, and whose members continue to visit for ceremonial and other purposes.
• Outdoor activities: Hundreds of thousands of people visit the monuments’ deep red-rock canyons and soaring mesas each year for hiking, camping, fishing, and other forms of recreation.
• Rich natural history: Both monuments are home to hundreds of species, including bighorn sheep, pronghorns, and more than 600 kinds of bees. And Grand Staircase-Escalante is also a treasure trove of fossil discoveries, some found nowhere else in the world: One paleontologist described it as “the last great unexplored dinosaur boneyard in the United States.”

The Trump administration’s attack

• President Trump signed proclamations shrinking Bears Ears to just 8.9% of its prior size and Grand Staircase-Escalante to 9.7% of its prior size. The cuts total nearly 3 million acres.
• Who benefits: Industries such as coal and hardrock mining have lobbied President Trump for more development and extraction of resources on our public lands, and this executive order attempts to give it to them.
• Déjà vu? The first Trump administration tried to strip monument protections from half of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and nearly 90% of Bears Ears National Monument. It was promptly met with an Earthjustice lawsuit and, eventually, with a full reversal by President Biden in 2021.

The power of national monuments

• Protection against industry threats: Monument designations like Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante protect sensitive ecosystems, cultural resources, and sacred sites from extractive industries, vandalism, and looting.
• A good investment: National monuments generate billions of dollars in economic output from recreation visitors while allowing a wide range of uses, including hiking, horseback riding, rafting, hunting, and fishing.
• Protecting lands for everyone: Public support for national monuments remains incredibly strong. A recent poll found that 91% of voters in Western states say existing national monument designations should be kept in place.

Part of a broader attack on public lands

• Coordinated attack: This attack on Utah’s monuments is part of a push to sell off and sell out America’s public lands to the highest bidder. The Trump administration and members of Congress are trying to fast-track logging in our federal forests, open our oceans to oil drilling, and expand fossil fuel development in Alaska.
• Ongoing destruction: Less than two years into his second term, President Trump is working to roll back safeguards from more than 86 million acres of public lands such as forests, deserts, wetlands, and other natural environments. Never has a president done such damage to our natural heritage.

We are ready to defend Utah’s monuments and other public lands

• The law is clear: The Antiquities Act of 1906 authorizes presidents to designate national monuments to protect the nation’s treasured lands. It does not, however, give them the power to shrink the monuments created by their predecessors.
• No one voted for this: Support for our public lands is bipartisan. Polls show that 4 out of 5 of President Trump’s supporters favor keeping national monument designations in place.
• We’ve been here before: Earthjustice and our partners are prepared to vigorously defend Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in court, just as we did in 2017. National monuments exist to protect land that belongs to all Americans — not line the pockets of wealthy corporations and their lobbyists.