Most Utahns wanted to protect their history — but Trump had other plans

A majority of Utah’s residents opposed shrinking Bears Ears National Monument before President Donald Trump drastically slashed its size last week, according to multiple polls conducted over the past few years. Those findings contrast with statements from Utah’s political leaders who argued that the cuts reflected what Utahns want.

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President Donald Trump signed two executive orders shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments by roughly 90 percent each. He announced the change flanked by members of Utah’s congressional delegation and Governor Spencer Cox, all of them Republicans. Trump’s proclamation said the move “will better align the use of these public lands with the public interest,” citing the region’s deposits of critical minerals such as copper, nickel, and uranium, among others.

On Monday, hundreds gathered outside the Governor’s Mansion in Salt Lake City to protest the cuts, part of efforts organized by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance across the state to pressure lawmakers.

The two monuments, which totaled about 3.3 million acres in southern Utah before Trump’s executive orders, were created by Democratic presidents despite protests from Utah’s elected Republican leaders.

During the signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Utah Representative Celeste Maloy, a Republican, said that supporters of shrinking the monuments included “the locals who are worried about losing multiple uses on these federal lands,” and said that Trump was “listening to the people of Utah” in reducing the size of both monuments.

“It was very unfair to the people of Utah,” Trump said, “and now fairness has been brought back.”

But separate polls conducted before Trump shrank the monuments show that most Utahns and residents of other Mountain West states favored keeping their existing designations.

“It is very contradictive of our findings,” said Michaelann Nelson, a professor of environmental rhetoric at the Utah State University campus in Price. “They’re kind of picking and choosing which Utahns they’re paying attention to and listening to.”

In surveys conducted in 2024 and 2025, researchers with Utah State University found that 61 percent of Utahns either supported or strongly supported preserving Bears Ears as a national monument, with just 19 percent opposed or strongly opposed. Some 53 percent of respondents opposed or strongly opposed reducing Bears Ears, while 26 percent supported the idea. The remaining 21 percent neither supported nor opposed shrinking the monument.

Nearly half — 46 percent — opposed Utah pursuing legal action to overturn the Bears Ears National Monument designation, which was initially created by President Barack Obama in 2016 under the Antiquities Act. It included 1.35 million acres, but has now been reduced to about 121,000 acres.

Grand Staircase-Escalante wasn’t included in the Utah State University study. President Bill Clinton designated that monument in 1996, and it eventually reached nearly 1.9 million acres after some adjustments by Congress. After Trump’s order to cut the monument last week, it now includes just over 181,500 acres.

Nelson, the lead author of the poll, said she focused her surveys on Bears Ears because it was newer and a bigger focus of Utah politicians’ ire at the time. But she expects Utahns’ sentiments toward Grand Staircase-Escalante are similar.

“In some ways, perhaps [Utahns would be] even more in favor of Grand Staircase,” Nelson said, “just because we’ve existed with it for more than 20 years.”

Jessica Schad, a professor of sociology and the director of the Utah State’s Community and Natural Resources Institute, oversaw the survey efforts. She suspects Utahns’ attitudes toward monuments haven’t shifted much in the months since researchers polled them.

“It seems like this issue has become really politicized,” Schad said, “and our politicians aren’t taking into account what residents are preferring.”

The poll included 468 respondents in Utah, and the university tapped sociologists based in rural parts of the state so the results didn’t overrepresent residents in the more urban Wasatch Front, home to Salt Lake City. “We use high-quality, really rigorous survey methods,” Schad said.

Other surveys conducted across eight Mountain West states showed similar sentiments about national monuments to the Utah State University poll. A total of 91 percent of voters in these states wanted existing national monuments kept in place as of January, compared to 88 percent last year and 80 percent in 2017, according to the annual Conservation in the West Poll conducted by Colorado College.

This year’s study included interviews with voters in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. About 24 percent of respondents lived in rural areas or small towns, 24 percent lived in cities, and the rest lived in suburbs. Politically, 36 percent identified as Republicans, including 35 percent who said they supported MAGA; another 36 percent were independent, and 28 percent were Democrats.

The survey found support for existing national monuments nationwide was strong across party affiliations, backed by 87 percent of Republicans, 92 percent of independents, and 96 percent of Democrats. The share of MAGA supporters who wanted to keep existing national monument designations in place grew from 81 percent in 2025 to 87 percent this year.

“We’ve asked about this many times over the years,” said Lori Weigel, a principal with New Bridge Strategies, a Republican public opinion research group that assists Colorado College with its annual poll. “What we have seen very consistently in the data is that people want additional protections for these public lands.”

The poll also found that voters from both parties wanted to prioritize “conservation, recreation, and renewables over fossil fuel development,” according to a statement accompanying the results. A separate December 2024 survey by New Bridge Strategies found 71 percent of Utah voters supported keeping Bears Ears protected as a national monument, and 74 percent felt the same about Grand Staircase-Escalante. Another 75 percent of Utahns surveyed backed a president’s ability to create more national monuments.

Utah’s politicians, including Cox and Senator Mike Lee, have asserted Democratic presidents went too far in designating the two monuments. The 1906 Antiquities Act allows presidents to protect sites of historic and scientific interest as national monuments, but directs presidents to preserve “the smallest area compatible with the proper care” of those lands.

“These multimillion-acre monuments that are bigger than the state of Delaware certainly do not fit that designation,” Cox said at Monday’s event with Trump.

The designations have brought more visitors to the Bears Ears and Escalante areas, a statement issued by the Utah Senate notes. That puts a strain on land management agencies and law enforcement, causing “degradation” at the sites.

When Trump downsized the two monuments during his first term in 2017, records showed mining companies had lobbied administration officials to reduce the boundaries of Bears Ears. The president’s latest orders both cite a need to mine domestic supplies of critical minerals on public lands as part of the justification for reducing Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.

During the signing ceremony last week, Trump complained that the previous monument boundaries closed off access to recreation, too. “You can’t do anything. You can’t go hunting. You can’t go fishing. You can’t do anything. You can virtually not even walk on it,” he said.

But the fact is that hunting, fishing, driving off-road vehicles on designated trails, and other recreation are allowed in both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — activities that are sometimes prohibited at other national monuments. Bears Ears also had an intertribal commission that federal agencies consulted for management of the monument and protection of its resources. Trump’s order disbanded that body.

Nearly 90 percent of Utahns supported Native American tribes having a strong role in managing ancestral lands, according to the 2024 New Bridge Strategies survey, and 81 percent said that the incoming Trump administration should keep agreements with tribes in place for managing Bears Ears.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/utah-national-monuments-trump-bears-ears-minerals/.

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