Outdoor Alliance Responds to Rollback of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments
Image: Jasper Gibson
Today, President Trump signed proclamations dramatically reducing the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, stripping protections from nearly three million acres of America's public lands. Today’s proclamation is of questionable legality and is more dramatic than the administration's 2017 monument reductions. It reopens a fight that millions of outdoor enthusiasts thought had been settled when the monuments were restored in 2021.
Outdoor Alliance is deeply concerned by today's decision. Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante are world-renowned landscapes that offer exceptional opportunities for hiking, climbing, mountain biking, camping, paddling, and exploring Utah's spectacular canyon country. National monument protections have helped conserve intact backcountry that make these landscapes extraordinary places to recreate. Rolling back these protections puts conservation values and the outdoor experiences they support at risk.
Outdoor Alliance is also concerned by the proclamations' treatment of Tribal Nations. Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante are not simply public lands—they are ancestral homelands that Indigenous peoples have stewarded since time immemorial. By describing Tribes as "stakeholders," the proclamations fail to recognize the unique government-to-government relationship between Tribal Nations and the federal government or the groundbreaking Tribal co-stewardship frameworks that guide the management of these landscapes. Those partnerships have strengthened the stewardship of these nationally significant places while ensuring they remain places where all Americans can connect with history, culture, and the outdoors.
Adam Cramer, CEO of Outdoor Alliance, said, “National monuments reflect what we choose to protect as a nation. Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante tell a story of remarkable landscapes, living cultures, and unforgettable outdoor experiences. Shrinking them by more than ninety percent sends exactly the wrong message about the future of America's public lands.”
The proclamations leave little doubt about their purpose: to remove monument protections so these landscapes can be opened to mining, drilling, and other industrial development. The Grand Staircase-Escalante proclamation argues that shrinking the monument will "better align the use of these public lands with the public interest" by making more of the landscape available for mineral extraction. The Bears Ears proclamation goes even further, directing that much of the land removed from the monument be reopened within 60 days to new mining claims, mineral and geothermal leasing, and other forms of development, subject to existing law. Outdoor Alliance rejects the notion that this serves the public interest. The public interest is served by protecting the world-class public lands that millions of Americans hike, climb, camp, hunt, paddle, and explore every year—not by sacrificing them to short-term industrial development.
Outdoor Alliance and our member organizations, particularly Access Fund, have spent nearly a decade advocating for these extraordinary public lands. We stood behind Access Fund in supporting the original designation of Bears Ears, fought alongside Tribal Nations and partners across the outdoor community after the monuments were dramatically reduced in 2017, and celebrated their restoration in 2021, when Outdoor Alliance CEO Adam Cramer as well as Access Fund’s Executive Director joined President Biden and Tribal leaders at the White House proclamation signing. Today's action once again threatens the protections that millions of Americans worked to restore.
Outdoor Alliance will continue working alongside Tribal Nations, local communities, recreation organizations, and conservation partners to ensure these extraordinary public lands remain protected and accessible for future generations.
The outdoor community has a key role to play right now–lawmakers need to hear what outdoor recreationists think of these rollbacks. Use the tool below to reach out and tell your lawmakers what you think of rolling back protections for public lands.