DENVER—President Donald Trump today signed proclamations attempting to shrink the boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, reducing the size of each by about 90 percent. Bears Ears National Monument will be reduced by over 1.2 million acres, and Grand Staircase-Escalante will be reduced by nearly 1.7 million acres.
During the signing, President Trump falsely stated that “You can’t go hunting, you can’t go fishing, you can’t do anything, you can virtually not even walk on it.” Deputy Interior Secretary Kate MacGregor followed up by saying, “That’s exactly right sir, so you are remedying that today.”
In fact, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase explicitly allow hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation inside the monuments, something that the State of Utah’s own hunting regulations confirm.
MacGregor also misled the president and reporters when she claimed that the first monuments Teddy Roosevelt protected under the Antiquities Act were small in size. In fact, Teddy Roosevelt used the Antiquities Act to protect 800,000 acres of public land at the Grand Canyon. The Supreme Court later confirmed that such landscape-scale protections were proper under the Antiquities Act, and that large landscapes were considered “objects” under the Act.
The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Aaron Weiss:
“We all know that President Trump has very little understanding of what he’s told to sign. But Kate MacGregor knows better. Giving the president documents to sign based on false information is unconscionable. If she’s going to take over running America’s public lands while Doug Burgum plays pool boy, the least she can do is be honest with the president and the American people.”
The proclamations also attempt to open the land originally inside the monuments for sale or lease to oil, gas, mining, and logging companies beginning in 60 days. Weiss added:
“Senator Mike Lee’s attempt to sell off America’s public lands failed last year. Now he’s a sore loser, trying again with language in the president’s proclamation that makes it clear America’s public lands are up for sale. The people of Utah and the entire country have spoken with one voice: These lands belong to all of us, not Mike Lee, President Trump, or the mining companies his kids are in business with.”
The Bears Ears proclamation also attempts to disband the Bears Ears Commission, a body that was created at the request of the five Tribal nations that advocated for the designation of the national monument. The new proclamation would create a new “advisory committee” that drastically dilutes Tribal input.
Public opinion: When the first Trump administration asked the public in 2017, it received 2.8 million comments, 98 percent of them in support of keeping national monuments in place. A 2024 poll conducted on behalf of the Grand Canyon Trust found 71 percent of Utah voters support keeping Bears Ears as a national monument and 74 percent support keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante, including majorities of Republicans. Three-quarters of Utah voters support presidents’ authority to protect public lands as national monuments. Across the West, Colorado College’s 2025 Conservation in the West poll found that 89 percent of Western voters, including 83 percent of Republicans, believe national monument designations made over the past decade should be kept in place.