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Trump cuts Grand Staircase‑Escalante national monument's protected area

natureJul 14, 202620470

In 2017 President Donald Trump signed orders that sharply reduced protections for Grand Staircase, Escalante National Monument, cutting the area set aside in 1996 by President Bill Clinton by nearly half. Clinton had used the Antiquities Act to protect nearly 1.9 million acres in southern Utah to preserve the Grand Staircase rock layers, the Kaiparowits Plateau with important dinosaur fossil sites, and the Canyons of the Escalante. The Clinton proclamation drew immediate controversy because he announced it from Arizona and Utah’s congressional delegation objected to the monument’s size and scope, prompting lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court; the Court upheld broad presidential authority under the Antiquities Act. The Trump reductions were part of a broader 2017 effort that also drastically cut Bears Ears National Monument (an 85 percent reduction is reported) and other monuments, with the stated effect of opening those lands to mining claims. The lands remain managed by the Bureau of Land Management but with much smaller federally protected boundaries, a change that directly enables expanded leasing and mineral development on previously protected acreage.

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