Most Utahns want to protect their national monuments. Trump had other plans.

A majority of Utah’s residents opposed shrinking Bears Ears National Monument before President Donald Trump drastically slashed its size last week, according to multiple polls conducted over the past few years. Those findings contrast with statements from Utah’s political leaders who argued that the cuts reflected what Utahns want.

President Donald Trump signed two executive orders shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments by roughly 90 percent each. He announced the change flanked by members of Utah’s congressional delegation and Governor Spencer Cox, all of them Republicans. Trump’s proclamation said the move “will better align the use of these public lands with the public interest,” citing the region’s deposits of critical minerals such as copper, nickel, and uranium, among others.

On Monday, hundreds gathered outside the Governor’s Mansion in Salt Lake City to protest the cuts, part of efforts organized by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance across the state to pressure lawmakers.

The two monuments, which totaled about 3.3 million acres in southern Utah before Trump’s executive orders, were created by Democratic presidents despite protests from Utah’s elected Republican leaders.

During the signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Utah Representative Celeste Maloy, a Republican, said that supporters of shrinking the monuments included “the locals who are worried about losing multiple uses on these federal lands,” and said that Trump was “listening to the people of Utah” in reducing the size of both monuments.

“It was very unfair to the people of Utah,” Trump said, “and now fairness has been brought back.”

But separate polls conducted before Trump shrank the monuments show that most Utahns and residents of other Mountain West states favored keeping their existing designations.

“It is very contradictive of our findings,” said Michaelann Nelson, a professor of environmental rhetoric at the Utah State University campus in Price. “The…