President Trump is expected to move Monday to greatly reduce the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah/BLM

With President Trump expected in Utah on Monday to announce drastic changes in the boundaries to two national monuments in the southern half of the state, attorneys for groups opposed to his action were finalizing lawsuits to stop him.

According to documents that were leaked to The Washington Post, the president intends to reduce the 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by a bit more than 1 million acres and break it into three monuments to be known as Grand Staircase, Escalante Canyons, and Kaiparowits. Bears Ears National Monument would be shrunk to a bit more than 201,000 acres from its current size of 1.3 million acres.

Nearly two years ago, congressmen from Utah introduced legislation they thought would bring an end to fighting over public lands in the state. Under the Public Lands Initiative, not only would 19,000 acres have been added to Arches National Park, but a 1.2-million-acre "Bears Ears National Conservation Area would have been created covering much the same landscape that the Bears Ears National Monument created by President Obama a year ago did, albeit with different management directives. Beyond that, the legislation was extremely relaxed on where off-road vehicles could have traveled, and the state would have been given management authority over fish and wildlife.

Now, with President Trump expected to greatly alter the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, various groups, from Native American tribes to outdoor wear manufacturers including Patagonia, were prepared to bring sue if the president carries through. Also planning to take some action, though not necessarily legal, was the Outdoor Industry Association.

"Outdoor Industry Association and the outdoor industry view the announcement by President Trump as detrimental to the $887 billion outdoor recreation economy and the 7.6 million American jobs it supports," said Amy Roberts, the association's executive director. "This decision is part of a long pattern of attacks against public lands and will harm hundreds of local Utah communities and businesses, will stifle millions of dollars in annual economic activity and threatens thousands of jobs in the region.

"Outdoor Industry Association will continue to educate the industry and all Americans about President Trump’s assault on our industry and our nation’s public lands, and we will continue to support the members of Congress who defend both and who understand the importance of the outdoor recreation economy to local communities," she added.

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument would be reduced by roughly 1 million acres under President Trump's plan/BLM

In Utah, the Southern Utah WIlderness Alliance was organizing a rally at the Capitol on Monday, where the president is expected to make his announcement at 12:30 p.m. Protesters were asked to be there by 10:45 a.m.

"We will stand and chant with signs and banners in an APPROVED PROTEST ZONE forming an arc along the south end of the Capitol grounds," the conservation group said in a post on its Facebook page. "The zone is comprised of the sidewalks along 300 North, Columbus Street south of Apricot Avenue, and a short section of East Capitol Blvd. PLEASE STAY WITHIN THIS DESIGNATED ZONE.

"Trump is expected to cut Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent and reduce Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by half," the post continued. "This egregious assault on America’s public lands amounts to the largest rollback of protected areas in U.S. history. It is also an appalling affront to Native American Tribes who sought healing and cross-cultural understanding through protection of their sacred sites and ancestral homelands. The world will be watching as Trump launches his disgraceful attack on America’s public land heritage. Let’s make sure they see a HUGE crowd standing in unwavering defense of Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and the tribes."

On Saturday, a crowd estimated at 5,000 gathered at the Statehouse to protest the president's expected announcement.

"Utah is home of some of the nation’s most iconic, diverse, and breathtaking public lands, a fact that never escapes those of us who are lucky enough to live here. This assault on our national monuments by the Trump administration is an affront to the tribal nations and all Utahns. This threat to democracy will not stand," said Sierra Club Utah Chapter Director Ashley Soltysiak. "Flatly, Trump does not have the legal authority to gut our national monuments nor does he have the support of the people of Utah to do so. Thousands of Utahns raised their voices today, in recognition of the cultural, archaeological, and environmental significance of these areas. Today’s rally showed the strength of support for Tribal sovereignty and Utah’s public lands."

Also protesting the president's plans were nearly 150 scientists, who said Grand Staircase-Escalante was too valuable to shrink.

"I am gravely concerned that the forthcoming decision by the Trump administration will compromise the integrity of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and will set a negative precedent for decisions involving other national monuments,” said Arnold Miller, president of the Paleontological Society and senior associate dean and professor of geology at the University of Cincinnati.  “Grand Staircase-Escalante contains a trove of scientifically-valuable fossils and strata from boundary to boundary, and the excising of portions of this national monument for mining or other commercial activities will tragically compromise its integrity.”

In a letter to the president, 146 scientists said that Grand Staircase-Escalante “hosts one of the highest concentrations of dinosaur fossils in the world,” and that only 6 percent has been surveyed, and that “the potential for future discovery is tremendous.”

“New discoveries, like those being made regularly in the rocks preserved within Grand Staircase-Escalante, have the potential to alter our understanding of the processes of evolution and the responses of life to a changing planet," said Joe Sertich, a Grand Staircase researcher from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Word of President Trump's impending visit came as a new poll claimed that nearly half of the nation's voters don't want the president to alter any national monument, while 42 percent would like to see new monuments.

"...71 percent oppose removing the protected status of some national monuments if it would reduce the size of the monument’s public land and increase corporate development on this land," said a release from pollster McLaughlin & Associates. "Only 22 percent would support this, while 8% percent are unsure."

Whether President Trump has the authority to reduce the size of a national monument has been debated and likely will be the focus of legal challenges expected in the wake of his announcement. Past presidents have reduced the size of several national monuments, according to National Park Service records.

* President Eisenhower reduced the reservation for Great Sand Dunes National Monument by 25 percent. (He reduced the original 35,528-acre monument by a net 8,920 acres.)

* President Truman diminished the reservation for Santa Rosa Island National Monument by almost half. (The original 9,500-acre reservation by Franklin Roosevelt was diminished by 4,700 acres.)

* Presidents Taft, Wilson, and Coolidge collectively reduced the reservation for Mount Olympus by almost half, the largest by President Wilson in 1915 (cutting 313,280 acres from the original 639,200-acre monument).

* The largest percentage reduction was by President Taft in 1912 to his own prior reservation in 1909 for Navajo National Monument. (His elimination of 320 acres from the original 360-acre reservation was an 89 percent reduction.)

The Grand Staircase-Escalante monument has proved to hold a treasure trove of paleontological wonders. Bears Ears National Monument contains archaeological wonders from long ago civilizations, and parts of it are considered sacred by Native Americans.

President Trump early this year directed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review 27 national monuments, designated as long ago as 1996, to determine whether their designations had been properly made under The Antiquities Act. Secretary Zinke completed his review in late August, having visited just eight of the 27, but didn't make his recommendations public. Several organizations have sued the secretary for not publicly releasing his recommendations, and the process he followed to reach them, public.

The land battle pits a political mindset against economic realities, with the measure of each weighted heavily by one's political affiliation. Utah Republicans have, for the most part, been livid over the fact that nearly 65 percent of the state's landscape is part of the federal domain. Democrats generally see great value in that percentage. Polling tends to indicate that a majority of voters in the Beehive State value public lands in general, and national monuments specifically.

While U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, who lobbied President Trump to shrink the monuments, sees the coal reserves within the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument as a "tremendous economic resource for Utah," current events put a damper on that belief.

Nationally, coal production was down 18 percent last year, reaching its lowest output since 1978, according to the Energy Information Administration. Wyoming, the national leader in production, has seen a downfall in its output due to the glut of natural gas. On top of those trends, the Navajo Generating Station on the Utah-Arizonia border could close in 2019 due to the high costs of operations when compared to natural gas-fired generating stations.