As wildfires rage and courts escalate battles over boundaries, the president is reportedly targeting Utah’s two largest national monuments.
An arch in Bears Ears National Monument. (Photo: Adam Roy)
Updated July 10, 2026 06:27 pm
Lawyers for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments are vowing to take the Trump administration to court after reports that the president plans to shrink two controversial Utah protected areas by executive order on Monday.
Salt Lake’s ABC 4 Writing on Friday afternoon, three local sources confirmed the planned action, with one saying he had received an email inviting him to participate because the President “signed an order at 4:30 in the Oval Office on Monday, July 13, regarding the Utah monuments.” The email did not provide details about the extent or nature of the planned changes.
While ABC 4 did not name its sources, Steve Bloch, legal director and attorney Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA)told backpacker He believed the report was credible. In a phone call, Bloch said SUWA had begun hearing “buzz” about imminent executive action on the monuments as early as Friday morning.
“I think we now have three different data points that point toward an announcement on Monday,” Bloch said. (By the time of publication, the Interior Department had not responded to backpackerRequest for comment.)
Covering a total of 3.25 million acres of Utah’s red rock desert, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears have been political flashpoints since their respective designations in 1996 and 2016. The monuments have pitted opponents from Utah’s state government, its congressional delegation, and a coalition of conservation groups, hikers, and tribal governments in the oil and mineral industries who have pushed to protect the many culturally significant and sacred sites inside the monuments’ boundaries. The monuments survived multiple legal and congressional challenges until December 2017, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand Staircase-Escalante by 47 percent. The move sparked several lawsuits from monument supporters, including the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and outdoor industry giant Patagonia, who argued that the Antiquities Act of 1906 gave presidents the authority to designate monuments, but not to shrink or revoke them. However, before those lawsuits could be resolved, incoming President Joe Biden reversed the cuts and further expanded Bears Ears’ limits.
If that happens, the reported cuts at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase would come at a particularly fraught time for the monuments. On June 23, a federal appeals court ruled that a legal challenge by Utah to the monuments’ boundaries could continue, overturning a lower court’s ruling that presidential designations under the Antiquities Act were not subject to judicial review. Three days later, the Fire of Babylon began inside the boundaries of Bears Ears; The 103,633-acre fire is currently the largest in the United States, and has forced the closure of the monument and nearby Canyonlands National Park.
Bloch described the idea that the administration would announce cuts in Bears Ears as “shameful.”
“I hate to use this phrase, but it’s really adding more fuel to the fire, isn’t it?” Baloch said. “The administration is not ashamed that they would seize upon the largest wildfire in the country, and the smoke and destruction that that fire is causing on the landscape, to take advantage of that opportunity to further attack the monument.”
Bloch believes that Utah knew it would ultimately be unable to win a victory in its lawsuit and asked the federal government to intervene on its behalf, “to once again attack national monuments,” he said. If the administration takes action and shrinks the monuments, SUWA plans to challenge the action in court, Baloch said. (Another organization that had fought against previous cuts, Earthjustice, condemned reports of the upcoming executive action and vowed to resume its legal fight if the administration followed suit.)
Bloch said, “As we are expecting, if Trump signs new orders on Monday shrinking the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, we will sue the administration for that unlawful action, and we expect to prevail.” “I think there has to be oversight and hearings in Congress about what the administration is doing to attack national monuments, but, you know, frankly, I think the game is in the court right now.”
However, in the court of public opinion, Bloch believes the game has already been won.
Bloch said, “Americans and Utahns overwhelmingly support national monuments; they want to see the monuments, public lands, and all the resources within them protected for present and future generations.” “This is a very unpopular act.”
