The photo is a panorama of the Gulch in Grand Staircase-Escalante, (c) Tim Peterson
Two-thirds of voters in Utah believe protections should be restored to the entire acreages of two national monuments that were recently downsized. That’s according to a statistically valid survey conducted by the research firm New Bridge Strategy and funded by Grand Canyon Trust.
The results were released Wednesday and discussed in a Zoom press conference.
In July, President Trump slashed the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments by about 90 percent, opening the removed areas to new mining proposals.
https://www.ksjd.org/podcast/ksjd-local-newscasts/2026-09-09/lands-removed-from-bears-ears-to-open-to-mining-claims-september-11
Three-quarters of the 500 voters surveyed said they had heard about the recent reductions to the monuments.
Lori Weigel, principal of New Bridge Strategy, said during the Zoom conference that that represented a high level of public awareness.
“I work on many, many different issues, all kinds of public policy changes,” she said. “This is significantly higher than what we often see. So the fact that three-quarters could tell us that they had seen either a lot or something about this is really significant.”
Fifty-two percent of Republicans, 77 percent of independents, and 95 percent of Democrats said they supported restoring the greater protections to the monuments.
When he shrank the two monuments, Trump terminated the Bears Ears Commission, a group composed of five indigenous tribal nations that worked with the Bureau of Land Management to develop a management plan for Bears Ears.
Sixty-nine percent of those polled said terminating the tribal commission was a bad thing, while just 19 percent said it was a good thing.
Eighty-two percent of those surveyed said it is either important or very important for Native American tribes to have a strong role in managing public lands containing sacred or culturally significant sites.
“I think these findings demonstrate broad public recognition that tribal nations must remain meaningfully involved in stewardship and co-management of their ancestral lands,” said Davina Smith-Idjesa, co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition.
Autumn Gillard, coordinator for the Grand Staircase-Escalante Intertribal Coalition, spoke about that monument.
Gillard said its cultural resources “reflect the enduring histories of Indigenous people, as well as the experiences of the pioneer descendants and their communities.”
So, she said, “protecting historic homesteads, trails, structures, inscriptions, and community places allows descendants to maintain meaningful connections to the lives, hardships, and achievements of their ancestors.”
Mere consultation with tribes is not enough, she said.
“Meaningful tribal code management should begin at the earliest stages of decision making, not after policies, projects, or management plans have already been drafted,” Gillard said.
That concept appears to be supported by the majority of Utah voters, she noted, including 97 percent of Democrats, 86 percent of independents, and 76 percent of Republicans.
‘Tribal participation is not a partisan request. It is broadly supported by the people of Utah,” she said.
This survey was conducted from Aug. 10 through Aug. 17. It was of people in Utah registered to vote.
“Because of that, we know where people are located so we set quotas to ensure the interviews are proportional throughout the state,” Weigel said in an email to KSJD. “We also know from voter registrations other information about the electorate – like gender and age – and set quotas to ensure that the survey is representative of the electorate.”
There is a margin of error of 4.38 percent in the survey overall.
