FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Today, President Trump signed executive orders gutting protections for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in southern Utah, stripping safeguards from Indigenous homelands, irreplaceable cultural sites, wildlife habitats, and some of the most spectacular and scientifically significant landscapes in the country. New Mexico Wild condemns this reckless and unlawful action and stands with the Tribal Nations, conservation organizations, and communities in Utah and across the country that will fight to restore these monuments.
“An attack on one national monument is an attack on all of them,” said Mark Allison, Executive Director of New Mexico Wild. “Today’s action is a failure of leadership and a disgrace to our country’s promise to future generations. The Antiquities Act gives presidents the authority to protect our shared natural and cultural heritage, not to destroy it. If the president can use this illegal action to strip protections from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, then no monument is safe—including the places New Mexicans hold dear, like the Río Grande del Norte, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, and Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks. New Mexicans know these fights well, and we will not stand by while Americans’ public lands are sacrificed to extractive industries.”
Bears Ears National Monument was established in 2016 at the urging of the five Tribal Nations of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition — the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and the Ute Indian Tribe — and protects nearly 100,000 irreplaceable archaeological and cultural sites. The Pueblo of Zuni and other Pueblos with deep ancestral ties to the region call New Mexico home, and the monument’s collaborative, tribally led management model has become a national example of honoring Indigenous voices in public lands stewardship. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, designated in 1996, protects 1.9 million acres of world-renowned paleontological, geological, and ecological resources.
This is the second time President Trump has attempted this illegal maneuver. In 2017, he slashed Grand Staircase-Escalante by nearly half and Bears Ears by 83 percent over the objection of millions of Americans. Tribal Nations and conservation groups immediately challenged those actions in federal court, and President Biden restored both monuments to their full boundaries in 2021 before any ruling was issued. The Antiquities Act grants presidents the authority to establish national monuments, but it grants no authority to abolish or shrink them. That power rests with Congress alone.
Today’s orders defy the will of the American people. Protecting these monuments is overwhelmingly popular with Americans across the political spectrum. The Colorado College 2026 Conservation in the West Poll found that 91% of Western voters — including New Mexicans — say existing national monument designations should be kept in place, an 11-point increase since 2017, the year President Trump first attempted to dismantle these monuments.
New Mexico Wild urges New Mexicans to speak out against this attack and stands ready to support litigation and congressional action to restore and permanently protect both monuments.
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