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Dec. 4, 2017

SALT LAKE CITY — President Trump sharply reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah on Monday by some two million acres, the largest rollback of federal land protection in the nation’s history.

The administration shrank Bears Ears National Monument, a sprawling region of red rock canyons, by 85 percent, and cut another monument, Grand Staircase-Escalante, to about half its current size. The move, a reversal of protections put in place by Democratic predecessors, comes as the administration pushes for fewer restrictions and more development on public lands.

The decision to reduce Bears Ears is expected to set off a legal battle that could alter the course of American land conservation, putting dozens of other monuments at risk and possibly opening millions of preserved public acres to oil and gas extraction, mining, logging and other commercial activities.

“Some people think that the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” Mr. Trump said, speaking at Utah’s State Capitol beneath a painting of Mormon pioneers. “And guess what? They’re wrong.”

“Together,” he continued, “we will usher in a bright new future of wonder and wealth.”

President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears a monument in 2016, and President Bill Clinton classified Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996, using a century-old law called the Antiquities Act that grants presidents the authority to set aside landmarks and “other objects of historic or scientific interest.”

The law says that presidents should limit designations to the “smallest area compatible with proper care and management.” In both cases, Utah politicians have argued that the actions of the previous presidents abused the law by exceeding that limit and were illegal.

Environmentalists and some native nations say Mr. Trump’s decision will destroy the national heritage and threaten some 100,000 sites of archaeological importance in the monuments’ desert landscapes.

Conservative lawmakers and many Westerners argue that the move is the proper response to decades of federal overreach that have sometimes starved communities of revenue and autonomy. When Mr. Clinton formed Grand Staircase, the move halted plans for a coal mining project there that would have brought desperately needed jobs to a poor county.

Mr. Trump’s move is viewed as a victory for Republican lawmakers, fossil fuel companies and others. The federal government controls about two-thirds of the land in Utah, and the state’s leading politicians have long pushed for more local control.


“He’s been sympathetic to the fact that we’ve been mistreated,” Senator Mike Lee of Utah said of the president, “and I’m grateful that he is willing to correct it.”