President Trump clearly exceeded his authority when he lopped 2 million acres off of two national monuments in Utah, according to a law professor who closely examined past modifications to national monuments as well as powers given presidents under The Antiquities Act along with overarching Constitutional authorities and congressional jurisdiction.

Proposed management plans for two national monuments in southern Utah that were reduced in size by President Trump and their surrounding lands would increase air quality impacts, pose a greater threat than other alternatives to cultural resources, not manage any acres to protect wilderness qualities while make more lands available to mining and livestock grazing.

A hard rock mine that shut down when President Clinton established the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah in 1996 could soon be back in operation, as President Trump's realignment of the monument places the mine outside its boundaries and a Canadian-based mining company has purchased the rights to it.

In a 1973 TV spot, the United States Forest Service sage Smokey Bear admonished that “one careless second with a match and America the beautiful becomes America the ugly.” So what would Smokey say now when a few careless seconds with a pen allowed President Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to remove protections from two million acres of precious American wilderness? If courts uphold Trump’s executive orders of last December, they would reduce southern Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments by 85 and 46 percent, respectively, constituting the biggest rollback of federally protected land in American history.