President Trump is working to remove about 1 million acres from national monuments/BLM file

President Donald Trump in a late-night order Friday reversed President Joe Biden's protection of "nearly a million acres" under national monuments.

In the order the president said he was "[T]erminating proclamations declaring nearly a million acres constitute (sic) new national monuments that lock up vast amounts of land from economic development and energy production."

The directive, contained in a catchall executive order that rescinded 19 "executive actions" by the former president, provided no details on which national monuments were involved.

During his first term, Trump in 2017 reduced Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, both in Utah, by about 1 million acres each. Biden reversed that move, leading to speculation that Trump might again try to shrink those monuments.

According to the American Presidency Project, Biden protected more lands and waters than any other president. In early January before leaving office he established Chuckwalla National Monument and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, which together cover 848,000 acres in California.

"Chuckwalla National Monument in southern California is President Biden's capstone action to create the largest corridor of protected lands in the continental United States, covering nearly 18 million acres stretching approximately 600 miles," the project noted. "This new Moab to Mojave Conservation Corridor protects wildlife habitat and a wide range of natural and cultural resources along the Colorado River, across the Colorado Plateau, and into the deserts of California. It is a vitally important cultural and spiritual landscape that has been inhabited and traveled by Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples since time immemorial."

Overall, before he left office Biden established ten national monuments, expanded two existing national monuments, and restored the boundaries of three more. Those are:

• Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument (BLM) in Arizona and Avi Kwa Ame National Monument (BLM) in Nevada;
• Chuckwalla National Monument (BLM) in California;
• Sáttítla Highlands National Monument (U.S. Forest Service) in California;
• Camp Hale – Continental Divide National Monument (U.S. Forest Service) in Colorado and the Castner Range National Monument (Department of Defense) in Texas;
• Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument (National Park Service) in Illinois and Mississippi;
• Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument (NPS) in Illinois;
• Frances Perkins National Monument (NPS) in Maine;
• Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument (NPS) in Pennsylvania;
• San Gabriel Mountains (FS) and Berryessa Snow Mountain (BLM and Forest Service) national monuments in California were expanded, and;
• Bears Ears National Monument (BLM, FS, and five tribes) Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (BLM), and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) were restored by Biden.

Whichever monuments Trump is targeting this time, his actions likely will end up in courts. Still pending from 2017 is a federal lawsuit brought by conservationists contending that presidents lacked authority to reduce the size of monuments created under the Antiquities Act, which authorizes presidents to establish national monuments on federal lands.

That lawsuit was filed immediately after Trump signed an executive order shrinking the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. While Biden restored the original boundaries, the lawsuit was never withdrawn.

While a lawsuit the state of Utah attacking Biden’s restoration of the original boundaries to Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante was dismissed in August 2023, the state “appealed that case to the 10th Circuit, which held oral argument [this] fall but has not yet issued a decision,” Heidi McIntosh, the managing attorney for the Denver office of Earthjustice, told the Traveler back in January.

“It was clear from the plaintiff’s arguments that they’re hoping to get the cases to the U.S. Supreme Court quickly and attack the monument designations themselves and perhaps the Antiquities Act itself,” she said. 

In developing that story earlier this year over the impact a second Trump administration might have on national parks and other federal lands, the Traveler was told to watch for whether the new administration funds or supports national monuments designated by Biden.

Two weeks after the second Trump term began, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on February 3 signed an order mandating a review of all lands withdrawn from fossil fuel and mining development, including national monuments.  Burgum's directive that his assistant secretaries "review and, as appropriate, revise all withdrawn public lands" was viewed by conservation groups as language aimed at redrawing borders of national monuments.

Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for running the federal government that Trump has been closely following, called for reviewing and downsizing national monuments.