Utahns from both sides of the political aisle want the state’s national monuments to stay protected, according to new polling commissioned by the environmental nonprofit Grand Canyon Trust.
New Bridge Strategy, a Colorado-based public opinion research firm, surveyed 500 registered voters across the state — including Democrats, Independents and Republicans — in December about their views on protecting public lands.
The survey found that 71% of Utah voters support Bears Ears National Monument and 74% support Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Support for both monuments was highest among Democrats, with 94% saying they are in favor of keeping Bears Ears and 96% for Grand Staircase-Escalante.
The majority of Republicans polled also shared that sentiment, with more than 60% saying they support keeping the two as national monuments.
The survey concluded that 75% of respondents support the president’s ability to designate national monuments using the Antiquities Act of 1906.
Those views run counter to those of Republican state leaders, who have worked to roll back protections for the two monuments since 2021 through a lawsuit and proposed legislation attacking the Antiquities Act.
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments have been at the center of Utah’s war over public lands for years.
President Barack Obama created Bears Ears in 2016 at the request of five Native American tribes — the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, Ute Indian Tribe and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe — who were also given a management role. President Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996.
But in 2017, President Donald Trump slashed both monuments by millions of acres. Four years later, President Joe Biden restored them to their original boundaries, including additional acreage in Bears Ears.
When Trump minimized Bears Ears, he also minimized the tribes’ involvement in management to just one part of the reduced monument. In the recent survey, 89% of respondents said it is “very important” that “tribes have a strong role in helping to manage their ancestral public lands.”
During a news conference Tuesday, Charissa Miijessepe-Wilson, co-director for the nonprofit Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, said she was encouraged by the poll results.
Bears Ears, she said, has set “a precedent for collaborative management and represents a good first step in restorative justice for tribes...and allows us to have connection to ancestral homelands that we’ve typically been removed from.”
The imminent second Trump term could mean another round of monument reductions.
Sen. Mike Lee last week said that he hopes that is the case: “I look forward to working with President-elect Trump to ensure that national monuments are appropriately confined to the smallest area necessary to protect genuine antiquities, as the law requires.”
Miijessepe-Wilson said she anticipates Trump making reductions — and expects them to happen quickly. She added that tribal members are meeting with federal decision-makers to discuss protections for the Bears Ears landscape going forward.
“The tribes remain steadfast in wanting to protect this landscape,” Miijessepe-Wilson said, “because I think everybody is tired of the back-and-forth, right?”
Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Salt Lake City, said he worries that minimizing the monuments again could lead to more uranium mining, as state leaders have said they want to expand nuclear power. And Autumn Gillard, cultural resource manager for the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, said she concerned about a potential uptick in vandalism on cultural sites if Trump rolls back monument protections.
Tim Peterson, cultural landcapes director for the Grand Canyon Trust, said the strong support for both monuments and collaboration with tribes found in the survey could influence state and federal leaders.
“It’s an easy win for Utah’s politicians and for the incoming administration just to leave these monuments as they are,” he said.
