Trump Slashes Size of Utah National Monuments

President Trump signed executive orders reducing the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah by nearly 3 million acres, affecting more than 90 percent of each monument's protected area.

The move directly reverses proclamations by his predecessors and opens the previously protected lands to mining, drilling, and fossil fuel extraction.

Native American tribes that consider the sites sacred, along with environmental groups, have vowed to challenge the reductions in court.

The action revisits a controversial decision from Trump's first term that was later reversed, reigniting a long-running battle over public lands in the American West.