WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump signed two proclamations in the Oval Office late on July 13, shrinking the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah by approximately 3 million acres, combined.
‘We’re terminating certain monuments,” Trump said. “They call it monuments—not the ones we have outside.”
The president previously reduced the monuments’ boundaries with a December 2017 proclamation during his first term, but President Joe Biden reversed the decision in 2021.
Grand Staircase-Escalante was protected by President Bill Clinton with a national monument designation in 1996.
Staircase cliffs and vast canyons in the region are known for their rich natural history beloved by paleontologists, with dinosaur fossils scattered throughout the nearly 1.9 million acres….