President Donald Trump announced a sweeping reduction to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, slashing the size of each protected area by an additional one million acres.
The move revisits contentious environmental rollbacks from his first term that were subsequently reversed by the Biden administration. It directly challenges proclamations by his predecessors, who deemed these sites worthy of preservation under the 1906 Antiquities Act, a law granting presidents power to protect areas of cultural, historic or scientific interest.
