Defending Bears Ears — a short history

Three presidential proclamations, two boundaries, several lawsuits, and one continuing tribal coalition. A short summary of how Bears Ears National Monument became the most contested designation of its decade.

2016: Designation

On December 28, 2016, President Barack Obama signed a proclamation under the Antiquities Act designating Bears Ears National Monument, encompassing approximately 1.35 million acres of federal land in southeastern Utah. The designation was the culmination of years of work by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, an alliance of the Hopi, Navajo, Ute Mountain Ute, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and Zuni nations, who had together proposed the monument and asked for a co-management role.

2017: Partial rescission

On December 4, 2017, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation reducing the monument’s boundaries by approximately 85 percent, leaving two non-contiguous units totaling about 200,000 acres. The legal authority of a president to reduce a monument designated by a predecessor has been the subject of substantial scholarly and judicial debate; lawsuits challenging the reduction were filed by tribal nations, conservation organizations, and outdoor industry plaintiffs and were pending when the political context shifted again.

2021: Restoration

On October 8, 2021, President Joseph Biden signed a proclamation restoring the original 1.35-million-acre boundary, along with similar restoration for nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The proclamation also formalized a co-management role for the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition that had been informally pursued since the original designation.

The ongoing argument

The designation, rescission, and restoration are episodes in a long-running argument about federal land in the West that is older than the monument by a century. The argument has several persistent threads:

• Local economic concerns, particularly around grazing, mining, and access for off-highway vehicles.
• Tribal sovereignty, and the unresolved question of how federally managed land that is ancestral to multiple tribal nations should incorporate tribal authority into its management.
• The scope of executive authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906, including whether a sitting president can reduce or rescind a predecessor’s designation.
• Visitor management, especially as visitation has grown faster than the agency capacity to manage it.

None of these threads will be resolved soon. The monument exists in its current form because of the 2021 proclamation, and the management plan that gives effect to that proclamation continues to be developed in consultation with the inter-tribal coalition.

What ordinary people can do

The straightforward answers are not heroic. They are: stay informed, visit responsibly, support organizations doing serious legal and policy work, and — if you live in the region or in a state whose congressional delegation is involved — participate in public comment processes and contact your representatives during the windows when it matters. The supporting the cause page has specific suggestions.