Enviro NGOS FAFO as Trump shrinks monuments to half their 2017 designation
Left-wing activists have fooled around and found out as President Trump shrinks Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments to half their 2027 designation.
By Marjorie Haun
President Donald Trump has acted again to correct the Obama-Biden restrictions on Utah’s public lands. On July 13, 2026, he issued proclamations shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to approximately 181,541 acres and Bears Ears National Monument to roughly 121,096 acres. These designations comprise areas of about half of Trump’s 2017 reduced sizes and restore meaningful access to lands and resources locked away under massive designation produced by Outdoor Alliance showing energy deposits put out of reach by former GSENM designations.
The 2017 boundary maps produced by Outdoor Alliance showed how large portions of the original monuments overlapped with known coal deposits on the Kaiparowits Plateau and areas with potential for uranium, vanadium, and other critical minerals. This demonstrates that the expansive Clinton- and Obama-era monuments were never about protecting “objects of historic or scientific interest.” They were about walling off beneficial resources from the people who live and work in southern Utah.
The Trump Administration has given relief to the working people of southern Utah while sending a stinging message to the environmental-political complex that has been pushing for decades to put the entire region off-limits to economic development. The Kaiparowits Plateau holds substantial metallurgical and thermal coal reserves. Surrounding areas in both monuments contain uranium and vanadium deposits, along with potential critical minerals essential to national security and manufacturing. Trump’s proclamations explicitly cite the need to reduce dependence on foreign sources of these materials while complying with the Antiquities Act’s core requirement: monument boundaries must be “confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” That statutory language has been routinely ignored by activist Democrat presidents. Bill Clinton’s 1996 designation of Grand Staircase-Escalante encompassed nearly 1.9 million acres of landscape-level protection. Barack Obama’s 2016 Bears Ears monument covered about 1.35 million acres. These were not targeted safeguards for specific archaeological sites, historic structures, or unique scientific features but functioned as de facto national parks, prohibiting or severely restricting grazing, motorized recreation, dispersed camping, and mineral exploration across vast swaths of federal land — all without a single vote in Congress.
The Antiquities Act of 1906 was never meant to serve as a backdoor for locking up millions of acres. It was designed for discrete objects, cliff dwelling, unique fossil beds, etc., not entire sagebrush plateaus and unremarkable canyons. Trump’s 2017 and 2026 actions finally bring the designations back in line with the law’s plain text and original purpose.
Predictably, the usual suspects are already threatening lawsuits. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), the Grand Canyon Trust, and allied environmental organizations sued over the 2017 reductions and will almost certainly do so again. Their track record reveals a consistent pattern: they fight any attempt to restore multiple use while pushing for ever-larger wilderness areas and monuments across the Colorado Plateau. Their goals haven’t changed — to restrict or eliminate grazing, OHV recreation, dispersed camping, and responsible mineral development on as much public land as possible.
Far from their stated “conservation” missions, these NGOs’ policies would turn large portions of southern Utah into inaccessible wilderness, devastating rural economies that that have for generations depended on surface and subsurface natural resources. Grazing rights would be stripped from ranchers. County revenues would plummet. Retail and service businesses would be shuttered. energy and mining jobs that support families and reduce foreign mineral dependence disappear.
Trump’s approach is the opposite. By shrinking the monuments to core protections of genuine objects of value, he is returning the majority of the acreage to balanced, multiple-use management. Locals regain access to resources that can power the economy and strengthen national security. Motorized and non-motorized recreationists will access a wide range of activities. The land remains protected where it truly matters — specific cultural sites and rare geological and paleontological features.
Southern Utah has endured decades of federal overreach dressed up as environmental protection. The 2017 maps shows the resource wealth being withheld. The 2026 proclamations delivers on Trump’s promise of common-sense reform, demonstrating that the Antiquities Act can be used responsibly as a responsible conservation tool, not as a weapon against rural Utahns.
As legal challenges play out, the fact remains that these adjustments align with both the letter of the law and economic needs of Utah communities. Multiple use is the mission and foundation of public lands management in the West.
See the full White House press release HERE
Marjorie Haun – Managing Editor, Research, Content Creation
Marjorie Haun has worked as a free-lance writer in Western Colorado for several years, with her articles taking an emphasis on lands and water issues, domestic energy development, government overreach, and bad policy which has negatively impacted the folks who must deal with state and federal land management agencies. She’s a regular contributor to Range Magazine and has written for American Thinker, Daily Signal, Watchdog.org, Colorado Peak Politics, Parenting Today, and several Western Colorado-based news outlets.
Her work has also appeared in Townhall and Newsweek. Having spent most of her life in Western Colorado and Eastern Utah, she is intimately familiar with issues impacting the rural West and all the good folks trying to make a living off the land.
contact email: freerangereport@protonmail.com
From freerangereport.com