WASHINGTON (July 13, 2026) – Today, President Trump modified the Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to restore multiple use management, including grazing, to more than 2 million acres. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and Public Lands Council (PLC) have been working for over a decade to protect livestock grazing in an area that has been devastated by repeated misuse of the Antiquities Act that jeopardized grazing and with a midnight order at the end of the Obama administration.

“Revisions of the boundaries of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments is welcome news for Utah communities and livestock producers who have fought for years to protect erosion of access to grazeable acres in the area,” said NCBA Executive Director of Natural Resources and PLC Executive Director Kaitlynn Glover. “Protecting special areas and safeguarding cultural and economic productivity should not be at odds, but the Obama and Biden administrations ignored both the voices of Utah and the Antiquities Act that both called for direction to designate discrete areas, not whole landscapes.

While the monument management plans under previous administrations left the door open to some grazing, constrained access to grazing had rippling impacts. In 2015, the University of Utah showed that unutilized Animal Unit Months (AUMs) as a part of the monument management plan cost two Utah counties more than $9 million in lost productivity – a loss which is crippling to rural communities already challenged by lack of property tax due to federal land ownership.

“NCBA and PLC thank the Trump administration for once again making clear that protecting unique landscapes can be done without locking up an area twice the size of Delaware. History is clear: when monuments are designated, livestock grazing is removed, and landscape health and communities suffer,” said Glover.