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 Staircase-Escalante National Monument — which Trump also dramatically reduced — will shrink again.
Trump’s election to a second term 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.
If Trump decides to shrink Utah‘s monuments again, Utah‘s lawsuit challenging Biden’s 2021 restorations will be “moot,” said Steve Bloch, senior staff attorney for the environmental nonprofit Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
Such an action would revive another lawsuit, filed by SUWA and other conservation groups in 2017, which challenged the legality of Trump’s 2016 reduction of Bears Ears in San Juan County and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Garfield and Kane counties.
The Native American tribes that make up the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition — the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Ute Indian Tribe — also filed suit against Trump that year, arguing the monument reductions were “in violation of the United States Constitution and the Antiquities Act of 1906.”
At SUWA, “our work is going to be to make sure that the monuments stay in place,” Bloch said.
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 Staircase-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 U.S. Department of the Interior, the federal agency that oversees public lands, was written by former acting Bureau of Land Management 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 [Interior] 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.”
Aaron Weiss, deputy director for the environmental nonprofit Center for Western Priorities, said Trump‘s election to a second term will “likely have extreme consequences on Utah’s public lands.”
“Utahns love their national monuments and value the balanced stewardship of public lands,” he continued. “If the upcoming Trump administration supports Utah’s land grab lawsuit, resumes fire-sale oil and gas leasing, or touches Utah’s national monuments, it will quickly discover it’s touched a political third rail across the country and in Utah.”
Challenges to conservation and road closures
A new presidential administration means a change in personnel, which will affect all federal agencies in the executive branch. That includes the Department of the Interior, which houses the BLM.
Utah in June asked a federal court to throw out the BLM’s recently published Public Lands Rule, which puts conservation on par with commercial uses — like oil and gas, grazing, mining and logging — on public land. That litigation has not “advanced all that far,” Bloch said.
The BLM finalized that rule this summer after completing the rule-making process and reviewing public comments.
Trump’s BLM, if it wants to revoke the rule, would have to undergo a similar rulemaking process. “It’s not as simple as waving your hand and saying, ‘We’re not doing this,’” Bloch said.
“It’s not only going through the process of seeking public comment,” he said, “but it’s explaining and having a rational basis for reversing course.”
Utah has also appealed the BLM’s closing of roads near Moab in a travel management plan finalized last year. That litigation is ongoing.
Trump’s new BLM could take a new look at the plan, Bloch said, or work to undo the closures through litigation.
The BlueRibbon Coalition, a national off-roading and recreation advocacy group based in Idaho, separately challenged the road closures.
“We hope the new Administration and Congress will prioritize putting Americans first,” said Ben Burr, the group’s executive director, “by permanently reforming the Antiquities Act, reversing any lame duck land grabs, protecting critical infrastructure, and enacting policies that keep our public lands open, accessible, and free.”
In a September interview with The Salt Lake Tribune, current BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning said that despite the possibility of an administration change, she believes Biden’s BLM “set the bar at a different place” by addressing climate change, engaging with tribal nations and promoting conservation on public lands.
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.
Some of Biden’s changes to oil and gas production on federal lands — like a rule that raised royalty rates for oil drilling and increased bond payments — can‘t be rolled back overnight, Bloch said. Overturning the past administration’s regulations will require a review process and public input.
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.”
The Biden administration in 2021 named the goal of conserving 30% of the United States’ lands and waters by 2030.
“The United States and the world face a profound climate crisis,“ that announcement read. ”We have a narrow moment to pursue action at home and abroad in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of that crisis and to seize the opportunity that tackling climate change presents.”
Trump has called climate change “a hoax.” In a 2022 interview with Fox News, he said, “The climate’s always been changing.”
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 view from county commissioners in the south
Washington County officials, who are locked in a battle with the Biden administration over the controversial Northern Corridor Highway, are enthused about Trump’s victory. Approval of the 4.5-mile road, which would bisect the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, was granted in 2021, during the waning weeks of the first Trump administration.
After a lawsuit by Conserve Southwest Utah and other conservation groups, that approval was placed on hold pending the outcome of a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, and county officials are now predicting that approval will be revoked, which they say could affect area trails and worsen traffic congestion in the St. George metropolitan area.
Washington County Commissioner Adam Snow, who also emerged victorious in his reelection bid Tuesday, said he believes Trump’s success could signal better days ahead – not only for the Northern Corridor, but also for management of the state’s public lands.
The Biden administration has allowed Conserve Southwest Utah’s influence “to destroy decades of cooperative management,” Snow told The Tribune via email. “With Trump in office, federal agencies will once again be our partners in balancing conservation and infrastructure needs.”
Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke said he shares the commissioner’s optimism.
“Given the victory,” Clarke said, “we have additional tools to protect our climbing areas and trails. Washington County will keep advocating for our area’s recreation and transportation.”
Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollock, who describes himself as a straight shooter and has labeled environmental groups as terrorists, said he is equally excited about Trump’s victory. He’s been a vocal critic of the Biden administration, which he accuses of doing a poor job of managing his public lands in his county and locking them up to limit cattle grazing and use by off-road vehicles.
With Trump back in office, Pollock argued, Utah can get rid of wildfires by thinning the trees on national forest lands in the state, which he said will also help restore water aquifers. He added that a Trump presidency should also open up access to roads in Garfield County, 93% of which consists of public lands controlled by the federal government.
The public doesn’t want every road on Utah’s public lands closed, he said. “People living on the Wasatch Front want to be able to come down and use our public lands that belong to everybody,” he said. “If they don’t have access, they can’t go out and camp or ride on their roads with their side-by-sides and ATVs.”
Pollock has also criticized the BLM’s draft resource management plan for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which the agency wrote after Biden reversed Trump’s reductions to its size.
The plan could wipe out grazing, he said, bankrupt ranchers and farmers, close some roads and stop ATV use, and eliminate target shooting. Once Trump assumes office, Pollock said he believes that plan will change.
“I’m happy for the country,” Pollock said. “I’m happy for these rural and public-land counties that have suffered. And there is no getting around it, we really have suffered. ... Every time we turn around and try to get something done, they [federal officials] come up with a new rule that is adversarial to multiple use” on public lands.
