On July 13, President Donald Trump once again reduced the size of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, cutting their combined protected acreage by roughly 90 percent and reviving one of the most contentious public lands battles of the past decade. Bears Ears was reduced from approximately 1.36 million acres to just over 121,000 acres, while Grand Staircase-Escalante shrank from roughly 1.87 million acres to about 181,500 acres.

Trump justified the reduction as correcting a monument whose boundaries exceeded the Antiquities Act’s “smallest area compatible” standard, arguing that many protected features weren’t unique and were already safeguarded by other federal laws. He also asserted that shrinking the boundary would enable resource extraction and hunting access, but these justifications are merely a pretext for an appalling assault on cultural heritage, tribal sovereignty, and environmental protection.

Bears Ears contains thousands of archaeological sites and places of profound cultural and spiritual importance to Indigenous communities. Mark Maryboy, former Navajo Nation Council Delegate, activist, and advocate for Bears Ears National Monument, said, “Bears Ears is one of the last undisturbed areas our people have,” in an interview with the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The monument also represents one of the most significant examples of tribal involvement in federal land management in American history. In 2016, following years of advocacy by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, President Barack Obama designated approximately 1.35 million acres of southeastern Utah as Bears Ears National Monument. Five Tribal Nations — the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, and Ute Indian Tribe — joined forces to advocate for permanent protection of their ancestral homeland. Just one year later, Trump dramatically reduced the monument’s boundaries, cutting approximately 85 percent of its protected area. President Joe Biden restored the original boundaries in 2021, describing the monument as an irreplaceable cultural and ecological resource. The Department of the Interior subsequently worked with tribal governments to develop a groundbreaking co-management strategy intended to give Indigenous communities a role in stewardship decisions.

Now, less than five years later, the monument has once again been dramatically reduced, revealing a concerning theme in American public land management: conservation policy has become increasingly dependent on executive power rather than democratic consensus. As a result, some of the nation’s most sacred landscapes are trapped in an endless cycle of designation, reversal, and litigation. If a national monument’s boundaries can be radically altered every time political power changes hands, it undermines the strength of the monument’s protection in the first place.

The irony is that many environmental advocates embrace executive action because Congress has become incapable of passing major conservation legislation. In an era of polarization and legislative gridlock, executive actions often seem like the only path toward environmental protection. The Antiquities Act, for example, allows presidents to move quickly and avoid the compromises that accompany congressional negotiations. But prioritizing speed over permanence is not a practical conservation strategy because it subjects public lands to a partisan tug-of-war, rather than a stable system of stewardship.

The consequences of the existing governance framework are also detrimental to relationships between the federal government and tribal nations. If agreements between tribal and federal governments can disappear every four years, it presents an issue of democratic legitimacy and institutional trust, making long-term collaboration far more difficult. While the management of Bears Ear’s sought to incorporate Indigenous perspectives and traditional ecological knowledge into land stewardship, this intentional partnership vanished as the political pendulum swung. The deeper question, then, is not whether Trump should have reduced the monument, but whether the fate of public lands should depend so heavily on unilateral executive authority in the first place.

Historically, America’s longest lasting conservation achievements emerged through legislation, not executive action. National parks, wilderness areas, and landmark environmental laws have survived changes in administrations because they relied on congressional approval, and while legislation is often slower and more politically difficult to achieve, it provides permanence that executive action cannot.

Yet due to partisan gridlock, Congress has largely abdicated this role. Environmental groups then respond by lobbying the White House rather than Congress, opponents focus on winning the next election rather than striving for compromise, and instability ensues for all stakeholders. The battle over Bears Ears shows the growing tendency of both political parties to govern through executive power when democratic institutions fail to reach consensus.

Trump’s latest rollback may ultimately be overturned in court, and on September 2, a coalition of conservation groups, tribal advocates, and businesses filed motions in federal district court challenging the proclamation. But even if the monuments are restored again under a future administration, the underlying problem will remain unresolved.

America’s public lands deserve protections that last longer than a presidential term, and until Congress reclaims its role in shaping conservation policy, landscapes like Bears Ears will be stuck in a cycle of oscillating executive opinion. The tragedy of Bears Ears is not simply that its boundaries keep changing, but that the institutions responsible for protecting it are failing.

Photo Credit: Tom Till/Alamy Stock Photo