Trump just destroyed one of Obama’s signature national park accomplishments

President Donald Trump on Monday signed a pair of executive orders once again shrinking the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

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Bears Ears has been cut from 1.35 million acres to just 121,096 acres, while Grand Staircase-Escalante has been cut from 1.89 million acres to 181,541 acres — twin reductions amounting to around 90% of their previous footprints. Both monuments have also been divided into two noncontiguous units.

The pair of monuments have long been a political flashpoint, growing and shrinking based on who holds the White House. In 2017, during his first presidency, Trump slashed the footprints of both — Bears Ears by 84%, and Grand Staircase-Escalante by just under half — sparking a number of lawsuits before President Joe Biden leveraged the Antiquities Act to restore and expand their boundaries in 2021.

Trump decried the setting aside of such large tracts of public land as an “egregious use of government power” and pledged to return oversight to local communities and open the area to more farming, grazing, mining and resource extraction. Language in his latest executive order highlighted similar themes. 

In addition to noting that Biden’s prior proclamation “suffers from several flaws,” Trump went on to add that the regions contain resources vital to the country’s economic and national security, including critical minerals. “It is imperative that the United States not be dependent on foreign sources of these resources,” the Grand Staircase-Escalante order reads, adding that modifying the barriers “will help ensure that adequate domestic supplies exist, thereby reducing the threat posed by our Nation’s reliance on foreign sources.”

The expected cuts were widely reported late last week. But in response to media inquiries, a White House official repeatedly called the reports “pure speculation.” 

The executive order comes just a week after an effort led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee failed to overturn the management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante through an unusual legal maneuver involving the Congressional Review Act. The act allows the Senate to pass a “joint resolution of disapproval” regarding an administrative action — in this case, the existing management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante, which was passed in 2025 — via a simple majority. But such a vote must be done within 60 Senate session days after the action is first entered into record. Such a resolution would have needed to pass a vote by June 11. 

Lee was present, along with the rest of Utah’s congressional delegation, at Monday’s signing. “Today’s proclamation shows that President Trump listens to Utahns and respects the limits Congress placed on the Antiquities Act,” Lee said in a statement. “For too long, presidents have weaponized monument designations to lock up millions of acres, close roads, restrict grazing, and cut rural communities off from lands their families have lived on and worked for generations. I thank the President for correcting this abuse and keeping his promise to the people of Utah.”

Opponents of the move, which include conservation and environmental organizations, tribal coalitions and public land supporters, have been vocal in their disapproval.

“Today’s action makes it clear that Utah is the epicenter of Republican efforts to dismantle and obliterate America’s system of public lands. President Trump’s outrageous attack on Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monument was taken at the urging of Utah politicians — Senators Mike Lee and John Curtis, Governor Spencer Cox, and the others — who championed this action,” Scott Braden, the executive director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said in a statement sent to SFGATE, adding that the organization plans to pursue legal action over the decision. “These two landscapes deserve to be protected for current and future generations of Utahns and Americans, not opened to exploitation.”

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Davina Smith-Idjesa, the Four Corners tribal program manager at the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement that the lands “hold traditional knowledge and sacred connections that are inseparable from the land itself. Dismantling protections ignores years of collaborative stewardship and the enduring relationship Tribal Nations continue to have with these landscapes.”

Grand Staircase-Escalante was established in 1996 to preserve the unique geology, paleontology, wildlife and ancestral sites included within its 1.7 million acres. It was the first national monument to be managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and was also the first park designated under the agency’s National Conservation Lands program. Today, the initiative has expanded to include 906 units covering over 38 million acres that “represent some of the West’s most spectacular landscapes,” BLM says.

In 2016, President Barack Obama set aside 1.35 million acres as Bears Ears National Monument. In consultation with five tribal nations — the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and Ute Indian Tribe — BLM and the U.S. Forest Service developed a collaborative land management plan to protect the area’s 100,000 archaeological and cultural sites.

Such sites are now being threatened by a wildfire burning within Bears Ears that has brought the area onto the national stage. The Babylon Fire began on June 26 and is currently the largest fire burning in the country. A report released Monday put the fire’s total footprint at 106,610 acres, with only 50% containment. In recent days, the blaze has pushed over the crest of the Abajo Mountains, where it is now visible from the nearby town of Monticello, about 25 miles away. Sections of Canyonlands National Park, including the remote but popular Needles district, have been closed to visitors for more than two weeks.

Lands that now fall outside the official boundaries of the monument will continue to be managed jointly by the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees low-lying sections, and the U.S. Forest Service, which focuses on forested and mountainous terrain. Both agencies have been gutted during the second Trump administration. The BLM workforce has declined by 40% since 2024, while the USFS has lost 6,000 permanent staff to layoffs, buyouts or early retirements.

Tony DeMasters, the incident commander for the Babylon Fire, did not respond to questions about whether the shrinkage of the monuments would impact the fire’s management prior to this article’s publication.

The change may also complicate an ongoing court battle over whether Biden’s restoration and expansion of the monuments was legal. Utah recently won a key appeal in the lawsuit after a panel ruled that federal courts have the authority to review presidential land designations made under the Antiquities Act. 

Prior to the executive order, the state’s next step would have been to prove to a lower court that the Biden-era boundaries violate the law’s requirement to limit monuments to the “smallest area compatible” with protecting sensitive sites or artifacts.