President Trump on Monday signed orders cutting nearly 3 million acres from the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah.
The orders remove nearly 1.7 million of Grand Staircase-Escalante's 1.87 million acres and shrink Bears Ears from 1.36 million acres to about 121,000 acres.
"We’re actually giving more than we did the first time back to the people of Utah," Trump said in an Oval Office signing.
The cuts are more drastic than in 2017, when Trump eliminated almost half of Grand Staircase-Escalante and 85% of Bears Ears; the Biden administration restored the previous boundaries in 2021 and added 12,000 acres to Bears Ears.
The orders affect more than 90% of each monument's area and revive unresolved legal questions over whether a president can unilaterally withdraw a predecessor's monument protections; a 2017 lawsuit arguing Trump lacked that authority remains part of litigation over the monuments.
Parcels were nominated for drilling leases before the 2021 restoration, though Utah officials have said there is "very little energy potential" at Bears Ears; conservation groups say uranium mining is more realistic and that one uranium mine was reopened within the monument.
A large coal deposit exists within the original boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante, but mining there was not considered profitable enough for companies to dig after the land was opened during Trump's first term.
Not all lands removed from the monuments are entirely unprotected: some remain within federal Wilderness Study Areas and Areas of Environmental Concern, though the Interior Department last month announced a review of WSA policies that conservation groups say could weaken those protections.
Former President Obama established Bears Ears in 2016 to be managed in cooperation with Indigenous tribes near the Four Corners, and the Clinton administration created Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996 as the largest-ever U.S. national monument.
The cuts follow a Trump order last year to identify public lands to expand drilling and mining in the West, and Utah Republicans have long pushed for smaller monument boundaries to allow more drilling, mining, off-roading and grazing.