President Barack Obama created Bears Ears National Monument in 2016, declaring it would ensure future generations can enjoy its scenic and historic landscape.
President Donald Trump slashed its size the next year, “to reverse federal overreach.” Then President Joe Biden restored its original boundaries — a move the state of Utah is suing over.
With Trump’s win, Utah Republican Rep. John Curtis predicted Tuesday night, the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Escalante National Monument — which Trump also dramatically reduced — will shrink again.
Trump’s reelection will empower him to reshape the nation’s energy and environmental policies — and few states feel the impact of national public land decisions as much as Utah, where the federal government owns about 69% percent of the state. Those roughly 37.4 million acres are held in monuments, parks, forests and in “unappropriated” swaths managed by the Bureau of Land Management, which the state is demanding it relinquish in a Supreme Court filing.
A Trump administration could make decisions related to three of Utah’s pending major land lawsuits — from the state’s challenge to the monuments’ sizes to its demand for the handover of “unappropriated” federally owned public land inside its borders to its attack on the BLM’s new public lands rule, which puts conservation on equal footing with uses like grazing, mining and recreation.
Here are some ways a Trump administration is likely to change Utah.
Revisiting Utah’s monuments
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Bears Ears buttes, the namesake of Bears Ears National Monument, on April 10, 2021. President Barack Obama established the monument; President Donald Trump significantly shrank it and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; President Joe Biden expanded both monuments.
Project 2025, the 900-page policy document created by the Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for a second Trump term, doesn’t mention Bears Ears and Grand Escalante specifically.
But it calls for a review of all national monuments, taking a case to the U.S. Supreme Court to get a ruling on a president’s authority to reduce their size, and the repeal of the Antiquities Act of 1906, the law that allows presidents to declare them.
The chapter devoted to the Department of the Interior, the federal agency that oversees public lands, was written by former acting BLM director William Perry Pendley.
“Although President Trump courageously ordered a review of national monument designations, the result of that review was insufficient in that only two national monuments in one state (Utah) were adjusted,” he wrote.
“Monuments in Maine and Oregon, for example, should have been adjusted downward given the finding of Secretary Ryan Zinke’s review that they were improperly designated. The new administration’s review will permit a fresh look at past monument decrees and new ones by President Biden.”
Return of Trump’s ‘energy dominance’ agenda
Trump’s return to the White House will be a boon for the fossil fuel industry.
Project 2025 outlines plans to make oil and gas extraction on public lands easier by rolling back environmental regulations “that potentially burden the development or utilization of domestically produced energy resources” and reinstating a 2017 order to hold more sales for drilling leases.
While the Biden administration has worked to shift away from coal production, the plan encourages an increase.
Curtis, newly elected to the U.S. Senate seat Mitt Romney is leaving, said Tuesday night he will “advocate for energy security around the world and energy dominance.” He also shared that he voted for Trump.
The energy available from federal lands is too important not to develop, asserts Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma, who also helped write Project 2025.
“We’d love to not have to develop on federal lands, but you simply can’t in the West,” Sgamma told Wyoming Public Radio in July. “There’s just too much oil and natural gas resource that is on or underneath federal lands.”
Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, noted in a Wednesday statement the call in Project 2025 to “prioritize even more lands for oil and gas drilling.” Voters across the West and the country consistently say they support public lands protection over extraction, she said.
“America’s parks, monuments, forests, and public lands are universally popular, regardless of political party,” Rokala said. “If president-elect Trump and his administration try to sell off public lands, open lands to destruction, or put corporate profits ahead of public access, they will be met with swift resistance across the political spectrum.”
Housing on public land
Trump has also posed development on public lands as a solution to the country’s housing crisis.
“What Donald Trump has said is that we have a lot of federal lands that aren‘t being used for anything,” said JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, during the vice presidential debate in October. “They’re not being used for national parks. They’re not being used. And they could be places where we build a lot of housing.”
Sen. Mike Lee, for the second year in a row, proposed the Helping Open Underutilized Space to Ensure Shelter (HOUSES ACT) in hopes of speeding up the process of selling public lands destined to become homes.
A 2022 report from Lee’s office estimated that his legislation would fill 35% of the housing shortage in Utah and increase the number of people who could afford the average home in Utah by 21% — but critics question if it would result in a single affordable unit in the West.
— The Salt Lake Tribune will update this developing story.
