Where Utah once had two large national monuments, the state now has five smaller ones under an order signed Monday by President Donald Trump — but several high-value sites the original monuments were designed to protect are left out.
On a swift visit to Salt Lake City Monday morning, Trump dramatically reduced the once 1.35-million acre Bears Ears to 202,000 acres in two new renamed monuments and the Grand Staircase-Escalante to three new monuments totaling more than 1 million acres, down from 1.9 million acres.
In an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune on Sunday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who traveled with Trump to Utah Monday, said the original proclamations creating Bears Ears and Grand Staircase drew boundary lines “arbitrarily” in ways that disrupt access and “locked people out.