The US has acknowledged Bears Ears and Grand Staircase as sacred for over a century, but keeps stripping away protections

(The Conversation) — President Donald Trump signed proclamations on July 13, 2026, cutting the size of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by roughly 90% – meaning nearly 3 million acres will lose monument status and revert to ordinary public lands management in September. The Antiquities Act of 1906 requires presidents to use proclamations to establish or modify national monuments.

The cuts followed a long campaign by Utah’s Republican leadership to remove the designation and reopen the land for mining. Gov. Spencer Cox and members of the state’s congressional delegation stood with Trump at the signing, and Sen. Mike Lee said he had been working toward the reduction for roughly 18 months.

They argue that the original monuments were far larger than the Antiquities Act allows, since the law limits a monument to the “smallest area compatible” with protecting the objects inside it. Grand Staircase-Escalante was designated by Bill Clinton in 1996, and Bears Ears by Barack Obama in 2016. Cutting the monuments’ size opens the excluded land to mining. The Bears Ears proclamation points to the minerals underneath, including copper and uranium, as…