On Monday, almost a thousand protesters gathered around Utah to voice their opposition to President Donald Trump’s shrinkage of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
The protests were organized by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), which held events in Salt Lake City, Ogden, Provo, St. George, Bluff, and Moab. While President Trump made the decision to downsize the monuments, protestors in Salt Lake expressed frustration with Utah elected officials including Representative Celeste Maloy, Senator Mike Lee, and Governor Spencer Cox, all of whom supported the monument rollbacks.
“I think that anybody who’s voted into office should listen to what the people want, and people don’t want this,” said Katie Panushka, a protestor in Salt Lake. “People don’t want this in Salt Lake. People don’t want this in Ogden, and people absolutely don’t want this at the Grand Staircase.”
Polling shows that Utahns and voters across the West do not support downsizing monuments. A 2024 poll found 71 percent of Utah voters support keeping Bears Ears as a national monument and 74 percent support keeping Grand Staircase-Escalante, including majorities of Republicans. Colorado College’s 2025 Conservation in the West poll found that 89 percent of Western voters, including 83 percent of Republicans, believe national monument designations made over the past decade should be kept in place.
“We’re not powered by grievance,” said SUWA Executive Director Scott Braden. “We’re powered by love of place and just wanting to see these places protected.”
Quick hits
Utahns find strength in numbers during protest of Trump’s monument slashing
Salt Lake Tribune | Daily Utah Chronicle
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Quote of the day
We are not protesters. We are protectors.”
—Corrina Bow, an elder from the Kanosh Band and Southern Paiute, Salt Lake Tribune
Picture This
We wrote and deleted a whole think-piece about Jimothy – can fame and wildness ever coexist? Are parasocial relationships and anthropomorphizing two sides of the same coin?? – but we’ll spare you that and just say, please give wild things the space to be wild. Even when they’re cute, or different, or famous.
That can mean driving with care on park roads (and all roads). It can mean keeping food closed safely in a bear can when you backpack. It can mean seeing an animal and knowing that it means something special to you, and that it has the best shot in life if you don’t try to get close. It’s a good way to love them.
(Featured image: Protestors outside the Governor’s Mansion in Salt Lake City, UT. Photo by Katie Boué, Instagram)