Grand Staircase–Escalante, a national monument in Utah that is host to rock art dating back multiple millennia, will be significantly decreased in scale by Donald Trump as his administration attempts to capitalize on resources on the site’s land.

Established in 1996 at a scale of 1.7 million acres, Grand Staircase–Escalante has contracted and expanded in size depending on which president is in power. In 2017, Trump cut it in half; in 2021, Joe Biden expanded it once more.

Though today controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, Grand Staircase–Escalante is the homeland of an array of Native American tribes, including the Hopi, the Navajo, and the Ute Nation of Utah.

Conservative politicians have claimed that the archaeological significance of the site must be squared with the business potential of its resources. In a 2021 lawsuit against the Biden administration, Utah senators claimed that his expansion “draws unmanageable visitation levels to these lands without providing any of the tools necessary to adequately conserve and protect these resources.” The lawsuit was dismissed in 2023, with a judge saying that the Antiquities Act gave the sitting president the right to name and control national monuments.

A proclamation from Trump on Monday echoed some claims in that lawsuit, suggesting that cutting down the scale of Grand Staircase–Escalante would “better align the use of these public lands with the public interest.” Trump’s proclamation invoked the Antiquities Act as well.

“The Grand Staircase-Escalante region contains several resources that are vital to our economic and national security,” the proclamation said. “These resources include several critical minerals, such as chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, silver, thorium, titanium, uranium, vanadium, zinc, and zirconium, create jobs, fuel prosperity, and are essential to important sectors of the economy of the United States, including defense, manufacturing, and transportation.”

The proclamation continues, “It is imperative that the United States not be dependent on foreign sources of these resources. Modifying the Monument’s boundaries will help ensure that adequate domestic supplies exist, thereby reducing the threat posed by our Nation’s reliance on foreign sources.”

Also downsized was Bears Ears, a national monument in Utah created by Barack Obama in 2016.