PUBLIC LANDS × SOUTHERN UTAH
Two July proclamations removed national-monument protection from 2.93 million acres across Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante. Scroll to see the scale of lands put at risk.
These monuments hold living cultural landscapes, headwaters, wildlife routes, fossil beds, dark skies and immense roadless backcountry. Routes between sacred places, gathering areas and ancestral sites carry meaning alongside the places themselves. The July cuts replace that connected whole with small, separated islands.
On Sept. 11, the excluded acreage is scheduled to reopen to new mining claims, mineral and geothermal leasing, and other actions under public-land laws. One road can fragment habitat and unlock a much larger development footprint. Pumping and runoff can reach scarce seeps and streams. Noise, dust and light can travel beyond a lease line into places people hike, hunt, camp, climb and seek solitude.
THE PLACES BEHIND THE ACREAGE
Choose a monument. Drag right across the satellite image. Sage shows the connected 2021 footprint; coral shows land cut from the monument in 2026.
Satellite imagery is for orientation. The map shows generalized monument boundaries.
At 7 a.m. Mountain time on Sept. 11, the excluded land is scheduled to open to new mining claims, mineral and geothermal leasing, and other actions under public-land laws. Public input can change alternatives, correct an agency’s analysis and strengthen mitigation. Tribal Nations are organizing. Congress can write durable protection into law. The earlier people act, the more choices remain.
DURABLE PROTECTION
TELL CONGRESS TO ACTMAKE STATEWIDE SUPPORT IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE5 Calls makes it easy to contact your representatives and is one of the most effective ways to make your position count. Rather not talk? Call in the evening and leave a voicemail—congressional offices check voicemail daily and tally it like a live call.
TRIBAL LEADERSHIP
FOLLOW THE COALITIONSLET THE PEOPLE WITH THE DEEPEST TIES LEADThe Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalitions are organizing to protect ancestral homelands and cultural landscapes.
VISITOR KNOWLEDGE
PUT YOUR USE ON RECORDDESCRIBE WHAT DEVELOPMENT WOULD CHANGEDescribe how a proposal would affect access, solitude, dark skies, hunting, climbing, guiding, water or nearby businesses. Follow BLM’s project register for comment windows, then give specific firsthand evidence and request a concrete alternative.
Those overlapping designations add legal guardrails on some excluded acreage. Identifying them in every project review strengthens a defense whose goal is protection across the full landscape.
This story compares the 2021 monument footprints with the boundaries established in July 2026. It is current as of Aug. 28, 2026.
The before outlines come from USGS PAD-US 4.1. The after boundaries come from BLM Utah’s current national-monument layer. Satellite context comes from Esri World Imagery. Shapes were simplified for web display. Percentages use the approximate acreage stated in the proclamations; those proclamations and their maps are authoritative.
Here, “cut” measures acreage excluded from the national-monument reservation and exposed to changed rules. Project-level risk depends on location, design and review. The Sept. 11 opening is described as scheduled because later legal or administrative action could change it.
Scale comparisons divide proclamation acreage by 640 acres per square mile. State land-area figures come from the Census Bureau; Grand Canyon acreage comes from the National Park Service. Poll percentages retain the wording and rounding published by the underlying surveys.