Hundreds packed the park strip outside of the Utah Governor’s Mansion in Salt Lake City Monday evening to sound their frustration about last week’s reduction of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments.
Many came holding signs while they rotated chants like “vote them out” and “this is what democracy looks like” during what was dubbed a “monumental day of action” by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
“It’s time for us to call out the lies and to hold our elected officials accountable,” said Mimi Ortega, the organization’s Utah organizer, speaking over a bullhorn, as the crowd cheered and rattled cowbells, and some passing vehicles honked their horns.
More than anything, she said the effort was aimed at showing Utah leaders that Utahns care deeply about the public lands, and many aren’t happy with the decision to urge President Donald Trump to order a significant reduction of the two Utah monuments twice within the decade.
To that end, the protest was one of five scattered across Utah organized by SUWA on Monday. Protesters also gathered in Ogden, Provo, St. George and Moab, setting up outside the offices of Utah’s congressional delegation, in addition to the Governor’s Mansion in Salt Lake City.
Previous decisions over the monument sizes sparked lawsuits, and SUWA and other organizations are currently planning similar measures for President Donald Trump’s recent orders. It’s “not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when,’” Ortega told KSL after the event.
Gov. Spencer Cox, Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and Utah’s congressional delegation were all present when Trump signed a pair of declarations drastically shrinking the sizes of the Utah monuments last week.
One order reduced Bears Ears to approximately 121,000 acres, while the other trimmed Grand Staircase-Escalante down to 182,000 acres, shedding nearly 3 million acres of monument protection between the two in the process.
The new sizes are about a tenth of their original sizes and a quarter of the size of a previous cut that Trump had ordered in 2017, before that was overturned by President Joe Biden in 2021. Their previous sizes, Trump said, were “very unfair” to Utah.
“We need to rightsize these monuments,” Cox added, noting that both areas will still be managed by the Bureau of Land Management, which he said will keep natural, cultural and scientific “treasures” protected.
Other state leaders, like Attorney General Derek Brown, said that the Antiquities Act was never intended to be “a tool for locking up millions of acres with the stroke of a pen,” which is why he called Trump’s order “a major step in the right direction of appropriately sized monuments.”
However, several public lands, environmental and conservation groups have chastised the orders over the past week, asserting that the rollbacks allow for more oil, gas, coal and geothermal leasing and new mineral mining claims within areas that were previously protected.
Many in the crowd raised their hands when they were asked if they had visited places like Coyote Gulch and Cedar Mesa, two of the recreation sites within both of the monuments, during Monday’s protest. That was in response to comments Trump made that nobody could use the land at all, including virtually all recreation, under the original designation.
Leaders of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition, a tribal group that represented the monuments, said they were never consulted about the reductions, either. That also irked many who attended Monday’s event.
“You need to be fighting for the Indigenous people and the indigenous animals and the indigenous plants,” said Carl Moore, co-founder of the environmental and Indigenous rights group Pandos, saying they’re all groups often left without a voice in major land decisions.
Monday’s event ended with people signing postcards that will be sent to Utah’s congressional and state leaders, letting them know about their frustrations and desire to protect both monuments.
The turnout didn’t shock Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Millcreek, who was among those in attendance. He referenced a Utah State University poll published in February that found a majority of Utahns support the monuments.
“It’s not surprising to see ... a lot of people come out on a Monday evening on a hot evening to express solidarity here,” he said.
It wasn’t the first protest over the decision. The Wilderness Society set up projectors outside of the Department of the Interior’s Washington, D.C. headquarters to display images of the two Utah monuments with “SOLD” written over them on Wednesday. It also projected images of the White House ceremony while calling it “one of the largest giveaways of public land protections in U.S. history.”
It’s likely not the end, either, as groups seek to ensure Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears remain protected.
“Folks are really, really upset about what took place last week,” Ortega said.