Trump again shrinks Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments

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.

Flanked by Utah Republicans, Trump said in signing the executive orders that new restrictions made it virtually impossible to hunt, fish, or even walk on the monuments, which is not true. Both are accessible to visitors, including for hunting and fishing.

Trump’s executive orders will take effect in 60 days. Shrinking the boundaries of the monuments, the orders state, will better align with the administration’s goals for public lands: opening them up to extraction.

The orders say the decision puts power back in the hands of local communities, despite its disbanding and terminating of an inter-tribal working group for Bears Ears that led co-stewardship efforts at the monument— the first of its kind, and the result of years of advocacy from local tribes. Tribal officials said they were not consulted about the decision to reduce the monuments.

“[Trump is] saying the quiet part out loud. He’s being honest: I’m doing this so that we can mine and drill and graze cows,” said John Ruple, a law professor and program director at the…