Trump Slashes Bears Ears, Grand Staircase by 90% to Open 3M Acres for Mining

Nearly 3 million acres of protected Utah wilderness lost their federal shield with two strokes of a pen inside the Oval Office. President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive proclamations on 13 July 2026, cutting Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments to less than 10 per cent of their current size.

The signing, live-streamed by the White House, was flanked by Utah's entire Republican congressional delegation, Governor Spencer Cox and House Speaker Mike Schultz. Tribal nations and conservation groups have already vowed to sue.

The Proclamations and the Numbers

Under Proclamation 9558, Bears Ears shrinks from 1.36 million acres to roughly 121,100 acres, a reduction of roughly 90%, while Grand Staircase-Escalante falls from nearly 1.9 million acres to about 182,000 acres. Combined, the cuts remove close to 3 million acres from federal monument protection, according to a news release from Governor Cox's office.

The Interior and Agriculture Secretaries will jointly manage the reduced monuments going forward.

Crucially, the land removed from the boundaries does not stay locked up. Trump's proclamation states plainly that the withdrawn land will be opened for sale or lease for mining, arguing the Bears Ears region holds resources 'vital to energy and resource independence' and, in turn, 'critical to national security.'

Reactions From Utah's Delegation and the White House

Trump characterised the move as correcting an old grievance, telling reporters in the Oval Office, 'It was very unfair to the people of Utah, and now fairness has been brought back.' He added that the change was 'better than the first time', referencing his own 2017 reduction of the same two monuments, which was later reversed by President Biden.

Governor Cox argued the original designations broke with the letter of the 1906 Antiquities Act, which requires monuments be confined to the smallest area compatible with protecting the relevant objects. Senator Mike Lee, who said he began working toward the reduction roughly eighteen months ago, described a careful process built on meetings with local stakeholders and Interior Department officials. Representative Celeste Maloy framed the cuts as responsive to residents who want the land available for grazing, recreation and other uses rather than what she called being 'locked up.'

Not every industry voice backed the move on economic grounds. Melissa Simpson, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said in a statement that Bears Ears 'has never been a significant oil and natural gas prospect', despite years of advocacy group rhetoric to the contrary, a note of caution that complicates the administration's own resource-independence framing.

Tribes and Conservation Groups Vow to Fight

Opposition centres on tribal consultation and archaeological loss. Bears Ears was co-proposed in 2016 by five tribal nations, the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Ute Indian Tribe, and the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition says the monument's original boundaries protect more than 100,000 archaeological sites. Autumn Gillard, coordinator of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition and a descendant of the Cedar Band of Paiutes, said in a prepared statement that tribes 'were not informed of or asked about this decision', calling it a direct strike against the federal government's duty to consult with tribes.

Conservation and legal groups were equally blunt. The National Parks Conservation Association called the order 'both a betrayal to the American people and illegal', arguing no president has authority to erase or shrink a monument unilaterally. Steve Bloch, legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, told the Salt Lake Tribune the group was disappointed but not surprised, given pressure from what he called 'anti-public land zealots.' The Center for Western Priorities cited Grand Canyon Trust and Colorado College polling showing more than 70% of Utah voters favour keeping the monuments at their existing size.

The Legal Battle Ahead

This is not new legal territory. Tribes and environmentalists sued over Trump's first-term reductions, but Biden restored both monuments before courts issued a final ruling, leaving the underlying question of presidential authority unresolved. That question could now reach the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice John Roberts has previously signalled interest in revisiting the Antiquities Act. Writing in a 2021 statement on a separate case involving a marine national monument, Roberts noted that any land reserved under the statute must be limited to the smallest area compatible with proper management, and that this restriction has 'ceased to pose any meaningful restraint' in practice.

The mining stakes are concentrated rather than uniform across the two sites. More than 350 uranium and vanadium claims sit inside Bears Ears' original boundaries, a significant share held by Energy Fuels Resources, which operates the country's last conventional uranium mill six miles from the monument. Grand Staircase-Escalante's Kaiparowits Plateau, meanwhile, holds an estimated 11.36 billion tons of recoverable coal, though the remote terrain has historically made extraction commercially unattractive.