We’re Suing to Protect Public Lands

What is happening in Utah is tragic. President Donald Trump’s proclamations all but eliminating Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments betray Tribal sovereignty and scrap years of work to create groundbreaking management plans for some of the most culturally significant places in the country.

And the orders are illegal.

As we did in 2017, Patagonia is joining a broad coalition in a lawsuit challenging the shrinking of Bears Ears. We will not stand idly by while anti-public lands crusaders attempt to exploit these lands for their extractive-industry friends or disrespect Tribal nations.

Patagonia made clear why we joined the lawsuit against the Trump administration in 2017: to enforce the law, carry out our purpose as a benefit corporation, stand with our grassroots partners, and to protect our business as an outdoor apparel company. Those reasons stand today. Public lands are vital to the millions employed by the $1.2 trillion outdoor industry and those who use them to connect with their culture and the natural world. Patagonia’s purpose as a business is to protect the planet and use every option to do so. Including litigation.

The Antiquities Act gives presidents the authority to establish national monuments, as President Barack Obama did with Bears Ears in 2016 and President Bill Clinton did with Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996. The legislative history of the act clearly reflects a focus and intent to protect prehistoric Indigenous archaeological and cultural sites. The land now known as Bears Ears was specifically called out in the legislative history for protection.

What the act does not give a president is the power to undo a monument designation.

The shrinkage is an attempt to force secession of federal land to the state and allow private companies to extract natural resources from that land. Generations of Utah leadership have obsessed over federal lands and spent years—and millions of dollars in ad campaigns—pushing for local control. Even if, by the state’s own admission, it would be forced to rely on drilling or mining those lands to fund their management. Which might be the entire point. In the seven weeks since the announcement, at least nine mining claims have been filed in formerly protected areas now cut from the monuments by Trump’s proclamations.

Protecting Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante is worth more than any amount of money. The vast majority of Americans agree.

Public lands remain one of the few issues that have bipartisan support. Nearly three-quarters of Americans oppose the sale of public lands. A majority of Utahns—despite what state leaders say—oppose removing public lands protections for development. A majority also supported keeping Bears Ears as originally designated. Eighty-six percent of Western voters also support Tribes having a strong role in the management of public lands—making the reduction of Bears Ears particularly malicious as the proclamation ends the Bears Ears Commission, which created the first Tribal co-management structure for a national monument in US history.

Hunters, fishers, hikers, climbers, conservatives, liberals, MAGA voters and everyone in between support public lands. Yet we find ourselves again facing a unilateral decision that does the opposite of what people want.

During the July 13 signing ceremony, the president as well as federal and state officials falsely claimed the monuments were inaccessible and that protections “took the land from the people.” These monuments are not fenced off. I spent 20 years living in Utah and have explored the monuments extensively with friends and family. They are singular landscapes people should experience for themselves—and many do: In 2024, Bears Ears had an estimated 416,000 visitors, and Grand Staircase-Escalante approximately 936,000.

Tourism at the monuments powers local economies and creates a sustainable source of income for surrounding communities. To say, as the president did, that visitors “can virtually not even walk on” the monuments, is more than just hyperbole. It is simply not true. Visitors can hike, backpack, mountain bike, rock climb (mostly in Bears Ears), canyoneer, hunt, raft, fish—the list goes on. National monument designation grants protection to the land from being irreparably damaged by unlimited mining, drilling, logging or other extractive development.

To this administration and a subservient group in Congress, that protection is a problem.

Since the first week of this administration, we have witnessed an aggressive whole-of-government campaign against protecting this nation’s critical air, water and land resources, including the undoing of environmental regulation, climate action and public land protection that will take years if not decades to undo. In a little more than a year and a half, the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to revoke its ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions; a forced deceleration of renewable energy projects cost taxpayers billions; and Congress voted to make way for a Chilean-owned copper mine near and underneath the Boundary Waters, the most-visited wilderness area in the country.

There are countless other devastating actions. Taken as a whole, it can feel disempowering, and that is by design. But Tribes, scientists, activists and everyday people are taking action. In Patagonia’s 50-plus years of supporting nonprofit environmental organizations, we have learned that for every oligarch or politician willing to sacrifice the planet for profit, there is a small, scrappy nonprofit 10 times more committed to protecting it.

Anyone who has ever loved a place or found solace in nature has a place in this fight—which is especially urgent, as this administration’s campaign against national monuments already extends beyond Utah’s borders.

Make your voices heard. Enlist your friends and take action to protect the places that have been put in trust for all of us to enjoy and use. We cannot wait for someone else to do the work. Do research, and in the midterm elections this November, vote for representatives who recognize the value of our natural world and work to protect it.

All of us must support the Tribes, leaders and organizations working together to protect the places we love.

Or prepare to lose them forever.