Outdoor apparel and gear company Patagonia joined environmental and tribal groups on Wednesday to challenge President Donald Trump’s decision to drastically reduce the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. The legal filings in the U.S. District Court in Washington seek to reactivate and update lawsuits originally filed in 2017 during Trump’s first term, when he previously attempted to downsize the public lands.
Outdoor Retailer and Conservation Coalition Challenge Monument Reductions
Following Trump’s initial actions in 2017, President Joe Biden restored and expanded the monument boundaries in 2021. Because the original 2017 lawsuits had not reached a final judgment, those cases had been administratively closed. On July 13, the Trump administration issued new proclamations reducing Bears Ears by roughly 90% and similarly shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante. The reduction brought Bears Ears down from 1.87 million acres to 181,500 acres, while Grand Staircase-Escalante was reduced to 121,100 acres from its previous 1.36 million acres.
Legal Arguments and the Antiquities Act
The coalition’s legal challenges argue that while the Antiquities Act empowers the president to establish national monuments and reserve land for protection, it does not grant the executive branch the authority to revoke or downsize them in whole or in part. Heidi McIntosh, managing attorney, noted that no court has overturned a monument designation
despite past challenges.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert described the orders as illegal measures that betray Tribal sovereignty
and threaten the outdoor industry. We will not stand idly by while anti-public lands crusaders attempt to exploit these lands for their extractive-industry friends or disrespect tribal nations,
Gellert said. He also noted that public lands are vital to the millions employed by the $1.2 trillion outdoor industry.
The White House and a Department of Interior spokesperson defended the administration’s actions, stating that the president is ending the abuse of the Antiquities Act, restoring access, protecting our heritage, and putting Utahns and all Americans first.
Proclamations from the administration argued that the policy changes allow lands to be put to a higher-priority use containing critical minerals important to resource independence and national security.
Tribal Impacts and Disbanded Commissions
The reductions also impacted cooperative management structures tied to the protected regions. Trump’s proclamation disbanded the Bears Ears Commission, which guided the monument’s management and included representatives from the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Zuni Tribe, and the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. Angelo Baca, an enrolled citizen of the Navajo Nation and member of the Hopi Tribe who works as a media consultant for the Indigenous-led plaintiff nonprofit Utah Diné Bikéyah, expressed disappointment that years of work toward tribal co-management had been put on hold or shelved.
Other groups joining the renewed legal battle include the Access Fund, which highlighted threats to approximately 1,200 climbing routes in areas like Indian Creek, as well as the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Christy Goldfuss, executive director of the NRDC, called the proclamations one of the largest rollbacks of public land protections in US history
and warned that opening the lands to mining and drilling risks losing ancient cliff dwellings, rare dinosaur fossils, and sacred sites tied to tribal nations.
