Monday morning, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments stretched across over 3 million acres of public lands in southern Utah, protecting some of the country’s most remote landscapes and scores of archaeological sites sacred to local tribes. By that evening, President Donald Trump had cut the monuments to just 302,600 acres.
While the two executive orders gutting the monuments and their protections repeat an action from the first Trump administration that was reversed by President Joe Biden, Monday’s reductions go far further than before.
In December 2017, Trump signed proclamations to reduce Bears Ears National Monument from 1.3 million acres to roughly 228,000 acres, an 85 percent reduction, while Grand Staircase-Escalante was cut nearly in half, from 1.9 million acres to about 1 million. Monday’s executive orders cut the monuments to less than a quarter of what was left after the previous shrinking of the monuments.
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