Trump Shrinks Bears Ears Land as Lack of Profitable Minerals Deters Energy Mining Companies

President Donald Trump slashed Utah's Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by nearly 3 million acres (12,140.5 km²) on Monday, even as state officials and market history suggest the energy resources used to justify the cuts face steep economic and logistical barriers to extraction.

The proclamations reduce Grand Staircase-Escalante from 1.87 million acres (7,567 km²) to roughly 180,000 (728 km²) and Bears Ears from 1.36 million acres (5,503 km²) to about 121,000. Combined, the two monuments now cover less than 303,000 acres (1,226 km²) down from more than 3.2 million (12,950 km²) an area nearly the size of Connecticut.

National monuments are created by presidential proclamation under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which lets presidents protect sites of historic, archaeological, or scientific importance.

Deeper Cuts Than Trump's First Term

The reductions strip protection from more than 90% of each monument and go far beyond Trump's 2017 downsizing, which was then the largest rollback of federal land protections in US history. President Joe Biden restored the original boundaries in 2021.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox, who joined Trump at the Oval Office signing, called it 'a big day for Utah' and said monument designations should cover 'the smallest area as possible to protect the antiquities'.

Trump claimed Monday that people cannot hunt, fish, or 'virtually not even walk' on the monuments. Steve Bloch, legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said the claim is false because hunting, fishing, and camping are permitted under state and federal regulations.

An Energy Case That May Not Add Up

The orders follow Trump's 2025 directive telling his administration to find public lands for expanded drilling and mining in the West. The economics tell a different story. The Utah Department of Natural Resources has said there is 'very little energy potential' within Bears Ears.

Grand Staircase-Escalante holds a large coal deposit, yet no company moved to dig it after Trump opened the land during his first term because extraction was not considered profitable enough.

Uranium is the more realistic target. A uranium firm lobbied the administration to shrink Bears Ears in 2017, The Washington Post reported, and conservation groups say one mine near the monument has already reopened.

Outdoor Recreation Economy in the Crosshairs

Both monuments draw visitors to ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, natural arches, and slot canyons. Conservation organisations, including the Center for Biological Diversity, warn that the cuts put more than 1.2 million acres (4,856 km²).of big-game migration corridors at risk and pave the way for mining and industrial exploitation.

Gateway towns that rely on public lands tourism stand to lose outfitter jobs and visitor spending, the groups say, because healthy monuments fuel the rural economies built around them.

Legal War Over Presidential Power Reignites

The cuts will likely revive a 2017 lawsuit arguing that no president has the authority to rescind a predecessor's monument. A federal appeals court revived a related Utah case last month, leaving the core constitutional question unresolved.

The new Bears Ears proclamation also disbands the commission of five tribal nations that co-managed the monument. Davina Smith-Idjesa, co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, called the decision 'heartbreaking' and accused federal officials of sidestepping their duty to consult tribal nations.

For the millions of campers, hunters, and road trippers who use these taxpayer-owned lands, decades of boundary ping-pong from Clinton and Obama to Trump, Biden, and Trump again leave one practical problem. Families planning trips genuinely don't know which rules will apply when they arrive.