Trump cuts nearly 3 million Utah monument acres, opening path for uranium and coal
Monday's presidential orders strip protections from nearly 3 million acres across Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments in southern Utah, reducing each site by more than 90%. The reductions exceed…
Monday's presidential orders strip protections from nearly 3 million acres across Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments in southern Utah, reducing each site by more than 90%. The reductions exceed Trump's 2017 cuts, which were at the time the largest rollback of federal land protections in U.S. history. Uranium deposits at Bears Ears and a large coal reserve within Grand Staircase-Escalante now sit closer to potential extraction, though the economics of both have long been disputed.
The numbers behind the reductions
Grand Staircase-Escalante loses nearly 1.7 million of its 1.87 million acres under Monday's orders. Bears Ears drops from 1.36 million acres to roughly 121,000. For comparison, Trump's first-term cuts eliminated close to half of Grand Staircase-Escalante and 85% of Bears Ears in 2017. The Biden administration restored both monuments in 2021 and added 12,000 acres to Bears Ears. Monday's orders go further on both sites.
The cuts trace back to a directive Trump issued last year ordering his administration to identify public lands suitable for expanded drilling and mining across the West.
What is in the ground, and why the extraction case is thin
Utah officials have said Bears Ears holds "very little energy potential." Uranium is the more realistic extraction target. Conservation groups say one uranium mine was reopened within the monument following Trump's first-term boundary changes. Grand Staircase-Escalante contains a large coal deposit, but after Trump opened the land in his first term, companies found extraction there not profitable enough to proceed. That acreage is open again.
Some removed land is not fully unprotected. Federal Wilderness Study Areas and Areas of Environmental Concern still shield certain parcels. Last month the Interior Department announced a review of policies governing those designations. Conservation groups say weakened rules would narrow what remains of the buffer.
The legal picture to watch
Courts have not settled whether a president can unilaterally withdraw monument protections established by a predecessor. A 2017 lawsuit argued Trump lacked that authority, and Monday's orders will likely revive the same arguments. A separate case, filed by Utah officials in 2022 to challenge Biden's restoration, was dismissed by a federal judge in 2023, then revived by an appeals court last month. With Trump having now delivered the outcome the Utah lawsuit sought, how that case proceeds is the next milestone.
Bears Ears was established by President Obama in 2016 to be managed in cooperation with Indigenous tribes near the Four Corners. Grand Staircase-Escalante dates to 1996, when the Clinton administration created what was then the largest-ever U.S. national monument. Both sites contain ancient ruins, fossils, rock art, and recreation destinations.