A number is going around. Ninety percent. It is the share of two national monuments that came out of monument status on July 13, by presidential proclamation — 91 percent of Bears Ears, 90 percent of Grand Staircase-Escalante, about 2.9 million acres between them — and it is accurate.
This is a road trip site, so my question is narrow: does any of this change a drive through southern Utah? Here is where it stands.
The short version
- The proclamations closed nothing. No visitor centers, no campgrounds, no roads. Both monuments are open.
- The 90% figure is real — for acreage. Bears Ears fell 91.1%, Grand Staircase-Escalante 90.3%. About 2.93 million acres left monument status.
- What can still change a trip out there is the burn scar, not the boundary. The Babylon Fire burned 107,189 acres of Bears Ears country and is out; a storm over that ground is what closes a dirt road this fall. The fourth, on October 11 and 12, left the Needles’ dirt roads impassable and closed nothing.
- The removed land opened to mining claims on September 11, and people filed — 72 at last count, half on old mine sites. A claim is a filing, not a mine.
- The lawsuits are live again. On October 13 the judge reopened the 2017 cases, unopposed, and on October 21 accepted the complaints adding this year’s proclamations; the government must give 48 hours’ notice before any ground-disturbing work on the removed land. The boundaries stand; nothing is enjoined.
- The proclamation also ended the Bears Ears tribal commission, and the tribes' seals came off the signs — the only physical change so far.
- Scenic Byway 12 runs exactly as it did. It's a state highway. A monument boundary doesn't close it.
What was actually signed?
On July 13, 2026, President Trump signed two proclamations under the Antiquities Act — proclamations, not executive orders — one modifying Bears Ears National Monument and one modifying Grand Staircase-Escalante. Both were published in the Federal Register on July 17, as Proclamations 11043 and 11044, with the official boundary maps attached.
Is the 90% cut real? Yes
Bears Ears goes from about 1.36 million acres to 121,096, a 91.1% cut, in two units: Shash Jáa and Indian Creek. Grand Staircase-Escalante goes from about 1.87 million acres to 181,541, a 90.3% cut, in two units: the Canyons of the Escalante and the Kaiparowits Horizon. Nobody disputes the acreage; the dispute is about the law.
Status of this story
as of October 21, 2026The new boundaries, mapped
The gray is what left monument status on July 13; the colored islands inside it are what's left.
Both layers come from BLM Utah's own boundary service, re-checked weekly; its acreages match the proclamations within a few dozen acres. The outlines are simplified — good for the shape of the cut, not for whether one parcel is in or out. For that, ask BLM.
Combined monument acreage · to scale
Bars are proportional to the acreage figures in the two proclamations. This is arithmetic, not geography — it shows how much, not which parts.
The official proclamation maps are the instrument of record.
Which places landed outside the lines?
Still inside: the Bears Ears buttes, House on Fire ruin, the Sand Island petroglyphs, and, right off Byway 12, Lower Calf Creek Falls and the Escalante canyons. Now outside: Grosvenor Arch, Devils Garden and Metate Arch on Hole-in-the-Rock Road, Chimney Rock, the Paria River corridor and parts of the Grand Staircase itself; on the Bears Ears side, Butler Wash, both Six-Shooter peaks, Valley of the Gods and nearly all of Cedar Mesa including Grand Gulch. The retained Indian Creek parcel is small: Access Fund's mapping puts roughly 80% of the Creek's climbing outside the line, with the Supercrack Buttress end staying in.
Outside the line does not mean closed, gated or gone. Every one of those places is still public land, still open, still reached by the same roads; what changes is that someone can now stake a claim there. If Devils Garden is on your list, go see Devils Garden.
Did the proclamations close anything? No
Not a thing. No visitor centers, no campgrounds, no reduced hours, no road changes, fourteen weeks in. The proclamations move a boundary: the land leaves monument status and reverts to ordinary BLM and Forest Service multiple-use management, which is what had withdrawn it from new mining claims. Nobody is putting up a fence. The roads that crossed that country on July 12 cross it now.
The fire is out. The burn scar is the thing to watch
For most of the summer the closure story here was the Babylon Fire, not the proclamations: 107,189 acres of the Abajos, Elk Ridge and Dark Canyon, contained August 12. At its height it closed the Needles District of Canyonlands and the Indian Creek corridor, the piece of Bears Ears the proclamation kept. Everything reopened by August 20.
What it left behind lasts longer. Burned ground sheds water instead of soaking it up, for five to ten years by the assessment team's estimate: debris plugs a culvert, water goes over the road, and access closes behind you. Four storms have tested the scar without closing anything, and a fifth is on it as this is written, under a flood watch naming recent burn scars through the morning of October 23; the Needles’ dirt roads were still impassable on the 19th. Check the Manti-La Sal alerts the morning you drive.
Roads, since that's what a trip runs on:
- US 191 and SR 211 are open end to end. SR 211 is the only paved way into the Needles.
- The Needles backcountry roads — Elephant Hill, Lavender Canyon and Davis Canyon — are open, which is not the same as easy. Per the park's October 19 road report, Lavender is impassable on a creek crossing and deep mud, the Elephant Hill access road is slick, and all of them want high-clearance four-wheel drive. "Open" and "drivable" are not the same sentence out there.
- Beef Basin is out for now. The same report has the Beef Basin road impassable after the rains and the Cathedral Butte trailhead unreachable, and Lockhart Canyon likely impassable. Call the Monticello field office before you count on either.
- Grand Staircase-Escalante's dirt roads have taken the storms harder. On the October 16 report Cottonwood Canyon Road is closed by Kane County, the first closure order of the fall; Left Hand Collet, Smoky Hollow and the Paria Movie Set road are impassable; Hole-in-the-Rock Road wants four-wheel drive for its last seven miles; Skutumpah is passable to Bull Valley Gorge. The rest is what a wet October does to dirt.
The advice for Bears Ears country is the ordinary desert advice with the volume up: watch the sky, don't camp in a wash, and treat a dirt road in the scar as something that can change in an afternoon.
What happened on September 11, 2026?
The boundary change took effect on signing. The land reopening did not: the removed acreage opened to mineral leasing and mining entry at 9 a.m. Eastern on September 11, sixty days after signing. BLM posted no notice and has said nothing since.
People filed, that morning and after. Sixteen claims went into the San Juan County books on opening day — three in Lockhart Basin from a Moab off-road guide, thirteen from Kimmerle Mining around its Easy Peasy mine near Cottonwood Creek — and by September 28 the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance counted 72: Kimmerle 33, the guide 3, and 36 from Land Survey Advisors, a claim-staking service. The Land Desk placed those 36 on October 2: nine clusters from lower White Canyon to Mormon Pasture, all on old mine sites, and the only ones of the 72 on file with BLM. Nine more were filed before the date, which the proclamations say "shall vest no rights." None on the Grand Staircase side; no newer count has been published.
Keep the frame. A claim is a filing; a mine needs a plan of operations, an environmental review and a permit. Every acre involved is open public land you can drive to. The filings say the interest is neither hypothetical nor slow.
The lawsuits came September 2. The court reopened them October 13
Fifty-one days after the signing, two coalitions of conservation groups asked the federal court in Washington to reopen the cases they brought against the 2017 reductions and add this year's proclamations. The argument never got decided last time: the Antiquities Act lets a president create a monument and says nothing about shrinking one. The five tribes, who led in 2017, filed nothing of their own but support the motions. The Justice Department and Utah "take no position."
On October 13 Judge Tanya Chutkan granted the motions, unopposed, and reopened both cases: the Tenth Circuit’s June decision and the July proclamation had changed the circumstances behind the 2021 stay. She set a fast schedule "because of the speed at which prospectors are locating new mining claims in the reopened areas" and ordered the government to give the plaintiffs 48 hours’ notice before any ground-disturbing activity on the removed land, terms due October 27, briefing schedule November 16. Nobody objected; on October 21 she accepted the amended complaints that put this year’s proclamations before the court. None of it moves a boundary: the proclamations are not stayed, nothing is enjoined, and nobody has asked for an injunction.
Congress, the management plan and the signs
Bears Ears is still run under its January 2025 management plan. In August the Government Accountability Office, at Senator Mike Lee's request, found the plan counts as a "rule" never sent to Congress, which allows a fast-track repeal; Lee started that clock on September 14, and no resolution has been introduced.
The one physical change so far is signage. The proclamation terminated the Bears Ears Commission, through which five tribal nations co-managed the monument, and around July 22 BLM crews took the tribes' seals off the roadside signs. A seal on a sign closes nothing.
One line in the Bears Ears proclamation is aimed at drivers: it orders a new transportation plan that "endeavors to maximize public access," with interim authority for motorized use on routes designated before 2016. No deadline is attached, but the road network out there is in play for the first time in a decade.
Is Scenic Byway 12 affected? No
We have a route that goes straight through this: Epic Trip #11, The Painted Mile, Byway 12 from Torrey to Bryce Canyon City, 116 miles, with Grand Staircase-Escalante as a signature stop. It runs as it always has. A monument boundary does not close a state highway, and Capitol Reef and Bryce Canyon on either end are national parks that none of this touches. Leave it on your list.
Where to follow this from here
This article gets a fresh pass weekly. Between passes, four things move faster than we do: the weather over the burn scar, the only one that changes a trip; the court’s October 27 notice terms and November 16 briefing schedule; the county recorders, where claims show before BLM does; and a repeal resolution on the management plan. For the current state: BLM Utah for both monuments, the Manti-La Sal alerts for any re-closure on the scar, Canyonlands road conditions for the Needles roads, and the Federal Register for the proclamations and maps.
Has this happened before? Yes — in 2017
In December 2017 these same monuments were cut by proclamation, Bears Ears by about 85% and Grand Staircase by about 47%; in October 2021 President Biden restored both. Every lawsuit against the 2017 cuts was shelved after the restoration, never decided, which is why the groups could ask to reopen them, and why no court has ever ruled on whether a president who can create a monument can also shrink one. The reopened cases may finally get there.
Change log
- October 21 — Weekly pass, three days after the last, one hundred days after the signing. The amended complaints are in: nobody objected by October 20, and on October 21 Judge Chutkan granted leave to file them, so this year’s proclamations are formally before the court; the 48-hour notice terms (October 27) and the briefing schedule (November 16) stand. A fifth storm on the scar: a flood watch naming recent burn scars covers the Abajos and Canyonlands through the morning of October 23; Canyonlands re-issued its road report October 19 (Beef Basin and the Cathedral Butte trailhead still impassable, Colorado River Overlook closed). Grand Staircase-Escalante report still October 16; claims count still SUWA’s 72; no resolution in Congress; boundary data unchanged.
- October 18 — Weekly pass, nearly fourteen weeks after the signing. The court ruled: on October 13 Judge Chutkan reopened both 2017 cases, unopposed, set a fast schedule because of "the speed at which prospectors are locating new mining claims," and ordered 48 hours’ notice before any ground-disturbing activity on the removed land, with a notice order due October 27 and a briefing schedule November 16; the takeaway, status row, lawsuits section, watch list and 2017 history are rewritten around it, and the boundaries are unchanged. The fourth storm on the scar, October 11–12, brought flash-flood warnings to the Escalante River, Hole-in-the-Rock Road and the Paria and no closure order; both road reports re-issued (Canyonlands October 12: Beef Basin and the Cathedral Butte trailhead impassable, Lockhart likely; Grand Staircase-Escalante October 16: Cottonwood Canyon closed by Kane County, Paria Movie Set road impassable, Skutumpah passable to Bull Valley Gorge). Claims count still SUWA’s 72 of September 28; no resolution in Congress; boundary data unchanged. "Eleven weeks in" had drifted to fourteen.
- October 6 — Weekly pass, twelve weeks after the signing. The 36 unplaced claims have been placed: The Land Desk (October 2) found the Land Survey Advisors claims in nine clusters from lower White Canyon to Mormon Pasture, all on old mine sites, and found them to be the only ones of the 72 on file with BLM, so “nobody has placed them” and “none is in BLM’s database” are gone from the claims row, the takeaway and the September 11 section. The count is still SUWA’s 72. Both road reports re-issued October 5: Canyonlands unchanged for the Needles; Grand Staircase-Escalante now has Cottonwood Canyon impassable at its north end, Left Hand Collet and Smoky Hollow impassable, Skutumpah not recommended and Hole-in-the-Rock back to washboard. The flood watch expired September 30 with no closure on the burn scar and no flash-flood warning in Utah since; the takeaway, the closures row and the storms passage are re-tensed. No ruling from Judge Chutkan and no new filing in either case (dockets read October 6); no repeal resolution introduced; BLM’s boundary data re-checked and unchanged at 121,039 and 181,451 acres; nothing new from BLM Utah, the Federal Register or the Manti-La Sal alerts.
- September 28 — Editor’s cut to a ten-minute read. The article had grown every week since July to 38 minutes; it is now about a quarter of that. What stayed: the short version, the status box, the map and the official maps, the in-or-out landmark list, the burn scar and roads, the claims, the lawsuits, Byway 12, the watch list and the 2017 history. What went: the week-by-week retelling of each thread (this log holds it), the boundary-data detective story, the sourcing asides, the pull quote, the separate signs, drivers’-directive and management-plan sections (folded into one), and the pre-opening claims as their own section. Every fact that survived was re-read against the September 28 pass; nothing was added.
- September 28 — Weekly pass, eleven weeks after the signing. The claims kept coming: Kimmerle Mining recorded seven more by September 23, either side of Natural Bridges (SUWA September 23, The Land Desk September 25), and on the 28th SUWA put the total since opening day at 72 — Kimmerle 33, Schultz 3, and 36 location notices from a claim-staking service that nobody has yet placed on the map, which the article says plainly; the claims row, the takeaway, the September 11 section and the watch list are rewritten around it, and the 2018-to-2021 total of 20 is there for scale. A fact the September 21 pass missed: Senator Lee entered the GAO opinion into the Congressional Record on September 14, which starts the Congressional Review Act clock (SUWA and Earthjustice, September 17); the management-plan row and the watch list now say so. The scar is under a flood watch through late Tuesday night from the remnants of Hurricane Polo, with warnings on the Paria, Wahweap Creek and Buckskin Gulch on Monday evening and none in San Juan County; the closures row and the storms passage carry it. No ruling from Judge Chutkan (dockets current to September 27); Canyonlands’ road report re-issued September 28 with the 14th’s lines unchanged; Grand Staircase-Escalante’s still the 18th; BLM boundary acreage re-checked and unchanged, and the three places that said “September 8” or “September 14” for that check now agree. Federal Register, BLM Utah, the Manti-La Sal alerts, Energy Fuels and Utah’s own suit re-checked and unchanged. Also repaired two pieces of broken markup left by the September 21 editor’s cut — the burn-scar takeaway’s class and the Closures row’s label — which had been rendering as stray text on the live page for a week.
- September 21 — Weekly pass, ten days after the opening. The court answered on September 16, with nothing: the Justice Department’s response in each case is one sentence — it “takes no position” on reopening — and Utah filed the same, reserving its arguments; the Farm Bureaus and the sportsmen’s groups filed nothing, so the motions are unopposed and unruled-on as of the 21st, and the status box, takeaways, lawsuits section and watch list say so. Sixteen mining claims were recorded in San Juan County on September 11 itself (Washington Post September 16, Salt Lake Tribune September 17, The Land Desk September 18): three by a Moab off-road guide in Lockhart Basin, thirteen by Kimmerle Mining around its Easy Peasy mine — last week’s “nobody has reported a tenth” passages are rewritten around them, the claims row now counts twenty-five, and the Kimmerle refiling reads as the re-staking the article had said to expect. Grand Staircase-Escalante’s road report re-issued September 18 after the September 16 storms: Cottonwood Canyon, Left Hand Collet and House Rock Valley impassable, Hole-in-the-Rock flooded in patches; the September 16 flash-flood warnings on the Escalante and the Hole-in-the-Rock slots added to the storms passage, with Bears Ears under a watch only and nothing on the burn scar closed. Canyonlands’ report still the September 14 edition. Federal Register, BLM Utah, Congress (no CRA resolution found), Energy Fuels, the Manti-La Sal alerts and Utah’s own suit re-checked and unchanged. Editor’s cut, same day: the parks-budget material is gone — the “was the budget cut 90%” section, its takeaway and the intro’s two-meanings setup — and the wildfire section is reduced to what still matters this fall, the burn scar and the roads, with the June-to-August reopening timeline retired. The piece is about the land now.
- September 14 — Weekly pass, three days after the opening. The court thread moved, on September 8–9 rather than this weekend: the government’s joint status report says it is “evaluating” the motions to reopen and records that the five tribes “support” them; Judge Chutkan set September 16 for the government and intervenors to respond — the status box, takeaways, lawsuits section and watch list now carry all of that, and the mechanism is stated more precisely (motions to reopen and lift the stay, supplemental complaints attached as proposed, not yet filed). No claim staked on or after September 11 has been reported by any group, outlet or BLM; the “as I write this on the morning of the 11th” passage is re-tensed and now says why silence three days on means little. Both road reports re-issued: Canyonlands’ Needles report of September 14 drops its “no access to Beef Basin from UT 211” line (now: good to Cathedral Butte, muddy after rain, nothing about beyond) — the body’s road bullets, which had been citing an August 14 edition while the status box cited August 24, are now both on the 14th; Grand Staircase-Escalante’s September 11 report has Cottonwood Canyon and White House Road eased, Skutumpah, Left Hand Collet and Smoky Hollow unchanged, Hole-in-the-Rock in deep sand. The September 11–12 storms added: a flash-flood warning on Hole-in-the-Rock Road, none on the burn scar, no washouts reported. BLM boundary acreage re-checked and unchanged; Federal Register, Congress (no CRA resolution) and the Energy Fuels inquiry re-checked and unchanged. Also fixed two stray backslashes that had been rendering in the road-reports row since it was written.
- September 11 — Weekly pass, on the day. The removed land opened to mining claims and mineral leasing at 9 a.m. Eastern, sixty days after signing; the countdown language in the takeaways, status box, the September 11 section and the watch list is re-tensed to past. BLM published no notice or release; its written reply to KSJD radio on September 9 and its Monticello field manager's "not a lot of changes on the landscape immediately" are now quoted, along with the roughly eighteen-month plan-writing timeline. No claim staked on the day had been reported by the morning of the 11th; the nine early claims stand at nine, with the note that a claim unlawful on the 10th could be lawfully re-staked on the 11th. The tribes' position clarified — still on the 2017 docket, not party to the September 2 motions. Boundary service, Federal Register, Canyonlands road report (still August 24), Manti-La Sal alerts (nothing new for the Monticello district) and Congress re-checked, unchanged.
- September 8 — Weekly pass. The lawsuits arrived: on September 2 two conservation coalitions moved in the D.C. federal court to reopen the 2017 cases and add the 2026 proclamations to them; new section, status row, takeaway, watch-list bullet and the 2017 comparison all rewritten around it. The five tribes have not filed. Manti-La Sal rescinded its fire restrictions September 4; Canyonlands' road report is still the August 24 one (Beef Basin line unchanged); Grand Staircase-Escalante's September 4 road report added — Cottonwood Canyon and Skutumpah "not recommended" after the storms, Left Hand Collet and Smoky Hollow impassable. September 11 is three days out and BLM has posted nothing about the opening. Boundary data re-checked, unchanged. Energy Fuels, the nine claims and the CRA thread: no change.
- August 31 — Weekly pass. The burn scar's first big storm: flash-flood warnings across southern Utah August 29–31, the Escalante River in flood on the 31st, and the Grand Canyon flood next door; nothing in the Babylon footprint reported closed as of this pass, and the Forest Service's only new order eases fire restrictions to Stage 1. Canyonlands' road report re-issued August 24 (Beef Basin still cut off from 211, now with the Elephant Hill route as the park's suggested way round). Energy Fuels missed the August 24 deadline on the insider-trading inquiry, in the committee members' account; the company's response added. Still no lawsuit at seven weeks, still no repeal resolution, BLM still silent on the nine claims, boundary service re-checked and unchanged. The September 11 countdown moved to eleven days.
- August 23 — Weekly pass. The Babylon Fire closure is gone: on August 20 the Forest Service rescinded its burn-area order eleven days early, and every San Juan County road shut for the fire is open — so the "still closed" list is retired and the closure status reads "lifted," with Beef Basin access off 211 flagged as the one loose end from Canyonlands' August 14 road report. Added the soil-burn-severity figures and the assessment's recommendation for gates and regrowth closures. New section on the management plan: a GAO opinion posted August 17 treats the 2025 Bears Ears plan as a rule under the Congressional Review Act, opening a fast-track repeal path; no resolution introduced yet, and the Grand Staircase attempt failed June 12. Noted the August 24 response deadline on the Energy Fuels inquiry and that BLM has still said nothing about the nine early mining claims. Re-verified the BLM boundary data (unchanged). Still no lawsuit, now almost six weeks out. Trimmed the boundary-data section, which had been written as a discovery and was still saying "last week" three weeks later, and dropped a pull quote that repeated the paragraph above it.
- August 17 — Weekly pass, two weeks on from the last one. Mining claims have been filed on the removed land ahead of September 11 — nine of them, seven in San Juan County within a day of the Bears Ears cut and two in Kane County on August 6 — and the proclamations say early filings vest no rights; that is now its own section. Added the August 10 congressional inquiry into share purchases at Energy Fuels the week before the signing, with its caveats. The Babylon Fire is out — 100% contained August 12 — and the closure has been narrowed twice, most recently to the burn area alone on August 13; the Needles roads we had listed as closed to vehicles (Elephant Hill, Lavender, Davis Canyon) have reopened, so that list was wrong and is corrected, along with the BLM Indian Creek line. Added what replaces the fire: five-to-ten years of flood and debris-flow risk, five flagged drainages, and the culvert-and-washout mechanic that actually cuts a road. Also fixed a number the last fact-check missed — the opening paragraph still said the budget claim was "off by a factor of about forty" while the budget section, corrected on August 3, said ten. Re-verified the BLM boundary data (unchanged). Still no lawsuit filed, now five weeks out, which the 2017 comparison section now puts in context.
- August 3 — corrections from a full fact-check. After the pass below, we audited every claim on this page rather than only the ones we'd just edited. Four things were wrong. (1) The roads paragraph called US 191, SR 95 and SR 211 closure perimeters "rather than being closed themselves," contradicting the reopening timeline directly above it — SR 211 was closed and reopened July 17; 191 and 95 are the ones that stayed open. (2) The budget section said the real BLM appropriation was "off by about thirty-eight times" from a hypothetical 90% cut. It's about ten times. A bad multiplier in the section debunking bad multipliers. (3) The Indian Creek climbing estimate was credited to "Climbing magazine's count" — the mapping is Access Fund and Outdoor Alliance's GIS Lab; the magazine reported it. (4) The "BLM Utah" link in the watch list had been dead (404) since publication. Also reconciled a contradiction where the retained Indian Creek parcel was described as keeping "the Creek's core corridor" two paragraphs above the line saying 80% of its climbing fell outside.
- August 3 — Weekly pass, and the biggest one since publication. BLM published the new boundary data — found on the weekly re-check, verified against the proclamations' acreages, and the interactive map is now redrawn from it showing what was removed against what remains. Added the Babylon Fire, a 107,000-acre wildfire that has been closing large parts of Bears Ears since June 26 and that this article should have covered from day one; corrected the unqualified "nothing is closed" framing accordingly. Added the proclamation's transportation-plan directive, the Grand Staircase sign removals, and fire-status sources to the watch list. Still no lawsuit filed.
- July 27 — Weekly pass. Still no lawsuit filed; BLM boundary data still unpublished (re-verified against the live service). Added the in/out landmark tracings, the Bears Ears Commission termination and the sign changes, and the likely mooting of Utah's own lawsuit.
- July 20 — Federal Register publication folded in: proclamation numbers 11043 and 11044, the official boundary maps, and a refreshed status box.
- July 14 — Published, the day after the signing.