Overview
- The president used a proclamation to shrink Bears Ears to about 121,000 acres and Grand Staircase‑Escalante to about 182,000 acres, reducing the combined footprint from roughly 3.2 million acres to under 303,000 acres.
- The Bureau of Land Management has started implementing the new boundaries by taking down signs, removing tribal seals that marked the Bears Ears Commission, and formally terminating that commission.
- Tribal leaders and local community members say the sign removals erase formal recognition of tribal co‑stewardship for places with ancestral villages, ceremonial sites and burials.
- Conservation and recreation groups have mapped the changes and say the new boundaries drop protection for hundreds of miles of trails and more than a thousand climbing routes and boulder problems, and they plan lawsuits and lobbying to restore protections.
- The move raises a test of the Antiquities Act because it is unclear whether a president may lawfully revoke or sharply shrink prior monument designations, a question now likely to be fought in courts and Congress and to affect other monuments nationwide.