On December 4, 2017, President Donald Trump jetted into Salt Lake City to sign two executive orders that would amount to the largest rollback of federal lands protections in U.S. history. “Under my administration,” Trump told a crowd of supporters, “we will advance…a truly representative process, one that listens to the local communities that knows [sic] the land the best and that cherishes the land the most.” Then, with the stroke of his pen, he reduced a pair of national monuments in southern Utah—Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante—by nearly 2 million acres.

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