President Donald Trump announced on Monday that his administration will dramatically reduce the boundaries of Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, reviving a longstanding dispute over the protection of public lands and Native sacred sites.
The White House said the action is intended to curb what it described as decades of federal overreach under the Antiquities Act and restore public access for multiple uses, including grazing, timber harvesting, hunting, fishing, energy development, infrastructure projects, and motorized recreation.
In a statement released Monday, the White House argued that previous administrations had expanded the Antiquities Act beyond its original intent by designating vast landscapes rather than protecting specific historic or scientific objects.
“The term ‘objects of historic or scientific interest’ has been stretched to include landscape areas, biodiversity, viewsheds, and remoteness,” the administration said, adding that many protected features are already safeguarded under other federal laws.
The administration also framed the decision as part of its broader public lands agenda, citing executive actions to increase domestic energy production, rescind the Bureau of Land Management’s Public Lands Rule, and prioritize multiple-use management across federal lands.
But Tribal leaders whose ancestral homelands encompass Grand Staircase-Escalante say the decision ignores the federal government’s trust responsibilities and years of Tribal consultation.
Members of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition sharply criticized the administration’s announcement, saying Tribes were neither informed nor consulted before the monument boundaries were reduced.
“Our Tribes were not informed of or asked about this decision, and that’s unacceptable,” said Autumn Gillard, a Southern Paiute citizen and coordinator of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition.
“The federal government must honor its Trust and Treaty obligations to our Tribes—it is not optional. Today’s action is a direct strike against the federal government’s duty to consult with Tribes. It also profoundly disrespects our intergenerational Traditional Knowledge by destroying a framework for Tribal co-stewardship over our ancestral lands in which we invested years of effort.”
Gillard said Grand Staircase-Escalante contains thousands of years of Southern Paiute history and remains central to the Tribe’s cultural, spiritual, and religious practices.
“In Southern Paiute teachings, we are taught from infancy that we are the stewards of these lands, which must be protected and preserved for future generations,” she said.
The coalition noted that Tribal Nations participated extensively in developing the monument’s current management plan, finalized in January 2025 after a two-year public process involving thousands of public comments. Coalition members said Tuesday’s action effectively discards years of collaborative planning and Tribal stewardship.
Erik Stanfield, an anthropologist with the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department, said repeated political reversals have undermined effective land management.
“Grand Staircase-Escalante has already been through too many rounds of planning, litigation, boundary changes, and political reversals,” Stanfield said. “Every time the Monument is cut apart and put back together, proper land management gets delayed, public resources are wasted, and Tribes are asked to start over after years of consultation. We need stewardship and consistency, not reactionary politics.”
Hopi leader Georgie Pongyesva warned that shrinking monument protections threatens living cultural landscapes rather than abandoned archaeological sites.
“Many assume that cultural sites have been abandoned, or refer to them as ‘ruins,'” Pongyesva said. “These places are not abandoned, nor are they ruined. These are living landscapes for which Tribes are the original stewards, and we are the living descendants of the ancestors that left their footprints and writings on these landscapes.”
Pongyesva also linked the decision to broader environmental challenges facing the West.
“In this time of drought, fires, and low water levels in the West, Tribal input and comanagement is needed more than ever,” she said. “Decreasing these monuments and cutting protections for these priceless ecosystems only adds fuel to the fires and problems we are now facing in the West.”
Davina Smith-Idjesa, the coalition’s Navajo representative, described the announcement as another setback for Native communities seeking to protect ancestral homelands.
“Grand Staircase-Escalante is far more than a landscape,” Smith-Idjesa said. “It is an ancestral homeland that holds our sacred places, plant medicines, waters, wildlife, and living history. Once again, Tribal voices are being pushed aside, yet we will continue to stand together in unity and fulfill our responsibility to protect these lands for the generations yet to come. Our connection to this place cannot be erased by the stroke of a pen.”
Designated in 1996 under the Antiquities Act, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument protects nearly two million acres of southern Utah, including world-renowned paleontological resources, archaeological sites, sacred cultural landscapes, and traditional plant gathering areas used by Native Nations for generations.
The coalition called on both the Trump administration and Congress to reverse the decision and preserve Grand Staircase-Escalante for future generations.
The latest action marks another chapter in the long-running legal and political battle over Utah’s national monuments, with Tribal Nations expected to again play a central role in efforts to defend protections for lands they consider sacred ancestral homelands.
