- 118 outdoor brands, including Patagonia, REI, Black Diamond and Osprey, are opposing President Trump’s decision to shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
- Local county leaders support the reductions, saying they restore balance, ease management burdens and create opportunities for responsible economic development.
- The dispute reflects competing views of the monuments’ economic impact, with outdoor businesses pointing to tourism and job growth while local officials argue the original designations eliminated traditional industries such as mining and timber.
A group of 118 outdoor businesses sent a to several federal agencies on Friday expressing their “firm and unequivocal opposition” to the recent size reduction of two national monuments in Utah.
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On July 13, President Donald Trump, joined by Utah’s governor and the state’s entire congressional delegation, signed two executive orders shrinking Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by about 90%.
In conversations with the Deseret News, outdoor brand CEOs and local county commissioners shared concerns about how the land has been managed. While the groups view Trump’s decision differently, everyone is frustrated with the decades-long tug-of-war.
Local commissioners see the the redrawing of the boundaries as an economic and environmental win, while the outdoor businesses view it as a slippery slope to privatization.
Signatures from Patagonia, REI Co-op, Black Diamond, Osprey, Backcountry and more were collective by the Colorado-based Conservation Alliance.
What has changed in land management?
The 2.9 million acres that experienced a status change are still federally owned and federally managed, but some of their rules for use, access and resource development have shifted.
Bears Ears is now open for new motorized routes through the newly non-monument sections.
The proclamation also opens the newly non-monument lands for potential mineral and geothermal development, mining claims and rights, and other land uses allowed under current public land laws.
Why are Patagonia, Osprey, Black Diamond and others opposed?
Patagonia’s chief impact and communications officer Corley Kenna told the Deseret News that she opposed the reduction because it “chipped away at public land protection.”
The California-based clothing company has been involved in the political issues surrounding Bears Ears since 2013. They advocated for the national monument’s initial establishment by giving grants to nonprofits leading the effort.
When Trump reduced the monument’s size the first time in 2017, Patagonia sued.
“We haven’t walked away from this issue. It made all the sense in the world to sign onto the letter,” Kenna said.
Neil Fiske, the president of Black Diamond, similarly described the move to the Deseret News as an “unprecedented attack on our public lands.”
Headquartered in Millcreek, Utah, Black Diamond makes gear for a variety of outdoor activities like climbing, hiking and skiing.
“Our company was born, literally born, out of these kinds of monuments. People go down to Indian Creek to climb all the time, and I don’t know, we feel this is just a core part of who we are and where we came from,” Fiske said.
After the reduction, Indian Creek is still within Bears Ears National Monument.
In a separate conversation, Mark Galbraith, the vice president of products at Osprey Packs, told the Deseret News that he was worried the monument’s land reduction would move southern Utah toward privatization.
He added that he hoped the oil and gas industry would stay away from the land. “I’m not anti-oil. I drive to work. I need gas. We make backpacks and products out of synthetic fabric. We need it, but we need it responsibly in the areas where it’s not having a negative impact,” Galbraith said.
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Meanwhile, local county commissioners are pleased with change
San Juan County, where Bears Ears is located, is home to about 14,500 people, and it covers about 7,800 square miles. It’s Utah’s largest county by total area, and 93% of the land is federally owned.
Lori Maughan, a San Juan county commissioner, told the Deseret News that much of the media surrounding the reduction has been untrue.
She referenced ads she’d seen online that show mining and oil pumps dotting the landscape.
“It’s just a false narrative, and it’s so far from the truth,” Maughan said. She continued, “If you like to backpack, hike or do things outside, you still can do every one of those things” without the monument designation.
She said she appreciated Trump’s executive orders, because she believes they will help her county manage the land and the monument itself more effectively.
Managing some aspects of Bears Ears, previously 1.36 million acres, fell on her county, Maughan said. “There’s just not the capacity for us to manage such big, vast swaths of land. How do we do it financially?” She referenced seeing trash built up on the side of the highway between Grand County and Monticello.
Maughan also expressed frustration over groups based outside of Utah being so involved in the issue. “The other difficult part is that they don’t live here,” she said. “It’s really difficult when everyone wants to tell us what to do, like we don’t know how to manage our own place.”
What have national monuments actually done for the economy?
Leland Pollock, Garfield County’s commission chair, told the Deseret News that former President Bill Clinton’s designation of Grand Staircase-Escalante as a national monument hurt his county’s economic health.
In Clinton’s original designation, more than 550,000 acres of the monument were in Garfield County. With Trump’s 2026 reduction, Garfield County now holds about 170,000 acres.
“When that monument was created, we still had two sawmills. … The notion that this has been some big economic driver is more propaganda,” Pollock said.
He continued, “The reason the sawmills went away is because of environmental litigation of timber sales, so they shut the sawmills down. They killed that industry, they killed all the mining, they killed all the drilling, and they took away half of all the grazing.”
Pollock referenced the speech Clinton made upon designating Grand Staircase-Escalante a national monument.
“I am concerned about a large coal mine proposed for the area. Mining jobs are good jobs, and mining is important to our national economy and to our national security,” Clinton said in 1996. “But we can’t have mines everywhere, and we shouldn’t have mines that threaten our national treasures.”
Pollock said he believes Clinton’s original designation was done “completely the wrong way,” because “he didn’t do it for the normal use of the Antiquities Act, like creating a Bryce Canyon. He did it to stop the analytics coal mine, period.”
Meanwhile, the outdoor businesses’ letter cited a study by Headwaters Economics, which says that the regions surrounding Grand Staircase-Escalante have seen employment rates grow by 51%, population increase by 26% and per capita income increase by 41% from 2001 to 2022.
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A came from service jobs, such as doctors, hospitality workers and teachers.