U.S. President Trump Declares Major Reduction of Bears Ears Monument

SALT LAKE CITY — President Trump said he would dramatically reduce the size of a vast expanse of protected federal land in Utah on Monday, a rollback of some two million acres that is the largest in scale in the nation’s history.

The administration said it would shrink Bears Ears National Monument, a sprawling region of red rock canyons, by about 85 percent, and cut another area, Grand Staircase-Escalante, to about half its current size. The move, a reversal of protections put in place by Democratic predecessors, comes as the administration pushes for fewer restrictions and more development on public lands.

The decision to reduce Bears Ears is expected to trigger a legal battle that could alter the course of American land conservation, possibly opening millions of protected public acres to oil and gas extraction, mining, logging and other commercial activities.

“Some people think that the natural resources should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington,” Mr. Trump said, speaking at Utah’s domed State Capitol. “And guess what, they’re wrong.”

“Together,” he continued, “we will usher in a bright new future of wonder and wealth.”

President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears in 2016, and President Bill Clinton set aside Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996. In both cases, Utah politicians said the actions were illegal abuses of a century-old law called the Antiquities Act.

Environmentalists and some native tribes say Mr. Trump’s move will destroy the national heritage and threaten some 100,000 sites of archaeological importance tucked into the monuments’ desert landscapes. Conservative lawmakers and many Westerners argue that the move is the proper response to decades of federal overreach.

The announcement sparked immediate outcry from Mr. Trump’s opponents.

“What’s next, President Trump,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, “the Grand Canyon?”

In April, the president ordered the secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, to review 27 national monuments created since 1996, something he said would “end another egregious use of government power.” In August, Mr. Zinke delivered a report to the president suggesting that Mr. Trump change the boundaries of six of those monuments.

Americans on both sides of the aisle have anxiously awaited the decision. On Monday morning, hundreds of people gathered outside the State Capitol in cowboy hats to protest Mr. Trump’s decision.

Helaman Thor Hale and Andrea Hale, both Native Americans, had brought their three sons to the rally. “It’s a historical trauma our people have been through over and over,” said Mr. Hale. “We’re showing our kids this is the real world. And it’s not nice.”

Further south, at the edge of the monument, another group had gathered to applaud Mr. Trump’s decision over the weekend, standing beneath a banner: “Thank you for listening to local voices.”

Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah. Credit Alex Goodlett for The New York Times

Who stands to benefit?

Mr. Trump’s decision to reduce Bears Ears is viewed as a victory for Republican lawmakers, fossil fuel companies and others who argue that monument designations are federal land grabs that limit revenue and stifle local control. And it is considered a defeat for many environmentalists and recreation groups and for the five Indian nations who have fought for generations to protect the Bears Ears region.

The Navajo Nation has vowed to challenge the decision in court, along with other tribes and conservation and outdoor industry groups.

“We will stand and fight all the way,” said Russell Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation, adding that the United States government had already taken “millions of acres of my people’s land.”

“We have suffered enough,” he said.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah said Mr. Trump’s decision would benefit his state. “He’s been sympathetic to our plight,” he said of the president. “He’s been sympathetic to the fact that we’ve been mistreated, and I’m grateful that he is willing to correct it.”

The federal government controls about two-thirds of the land in Utah, and the state’s leading politicians have long pushed for more local control of public lands. In an interview, Gov. Gary Herbert, called Mr. Trump’s move “nothing more than a realignment, a reconfiguration of the boundaries.”

What are national monuments?

National monuments are lands that are protected from some kinds of development by law. They are roughly analogous to national parks, but while national parks are created by Congress, national monuments are created by presidents through the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that has been used by both Republicans and Democrats over the years to protect millions of acres of federal land.

Each monument has its own specific restrictions. At Bears Ears, for example, federal rules forbid new mining and drilling, but allow the interior department to continue to issue cattle grazing leases.

Supporters of the Antiquities Act say the law is part of the bedrock of American conservation. But some Republican lawmakers, particularly those in Utah, argue that recent presidents have abused the act, using it to put aside far more land than its language permits. The law says that presidents should limit designations to the “the smallest area compatible” with the care of the natural features that the monument is meant to protect.

Why is the legal fight so important?

Mr. Trump is not the first president to shrink a monument. Woodrow Wilson reduced Mount Olympus by half. Franklin Roosevelt cut the Grand Canyon monument at the behest of ranchers. (Both are now national parks.)

But the courts have never ruled on whether a president actually has the power to make these changes. The coming legal battle will probably have far-reaching implications.

If Mr. Trump’s legal challengers win in court, the decision could affirm future presidents’ rights to use the Antiquities Act to extend protection to large areas of public land. And it could cement the boundaries of Bears Ears laid out by President Obama.

But if they lose, Mr. Trump and future presidents could drastically shrink any of the dozens of monuments created by their predecessors, opening the formerly protected terrain for all kinds of development.

One-hundred and twenty-one scholars recently signed a letter arguing that only Congress can legally shrink a monument. Todd Gaziano of the Pacific Legal Foundation and John Yoo of the University of California, Berkeley’s law school, hold an opposing view, and argue that the power to create a monument “implicitly also includes the power of reversal.”

Why did President Obama set aside the land in the first place?

President Obama created Bears Ears National Monument in December 2016, after years of lobbying by five tribes in the region: the Navajo, the Hopi, the Ute Mountain Ute, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and the Zuni. It is named for a pair of towering buttes — the Bears Ears — that dominate much of the landscape.

Mr. Obama set the boundaries to include 1.3 million acres. Monument supporters say it contains 100,000 sites of archaeological importance, including grave sites, ceremonial grounds and ancient cliff dwellings. In the 1800s, Navajo people used the area’s remote canyons to avoid capture by the Army, and several tribal leaders were born in the shadows of the Bears Ears.

The monument’s foundation document, written by the White House staff during the Obama administration, describes its sharp pinnacles, broad mesas, solitary hoodoos and verdant hanging gardens in poetic terms.

“From earth to sky, the region is unsurpassed in wonders,” the document says. “As one of the most intact and least roaded areas in the contiguous United States, Bears Ears has that rare and arresting quality of deafening silence.”

Why is the Trump administration considering changes?

For its supporters, the Bears Ears monument designation came to symbolize an indigenous victory after centuries of frustration.

For its opponents, it was an abuse of power by Mr. Obama, an infringement on the right of local people to decide what happens in their backyard.

“Our country places a high premium on consent,” said Phil Lyman, a county commissioner who lives at the edge of the monument. The designation, he said, “felt very nonconsensual.”

In September, a version of Mr. Zinke’s report recommended changing the boundaries of six of the 27 monuments under review.

But he also recommended the creation of three new monuments. One was at Camp Nelson, Ky., a post where black soldiers trained during the Civil War. Another was the Mississippi home of the civil rights hero Medgar Evers.

The third was in an area called the Badger-Two Medicine, in Mr. Zinke’s home state of Montana.