Nearly a thousand people gathered across the state Monday afternoon and evening to protest the loss of monument protections for nearly three million acres of federal land across southern Utah.

The goal, protesters said, was to raise awareness about the loss of the public lands, to be in solidarity with others who shared their concerns and to pressure state and local representatives to take their concerns to Washington.

“I was raised to have a deep care for the wildernesses in our state and for public lands, and so when I see that they’re under attack, and that the next generation may not get the same opportunity to enjoy them, it deeply upsets me,” 25-year-old Preston Palmer, who was protesting in Salt Lake City, said in an interview.

President Donald Trump shrank Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by about 90% last week. Utah’s congressional delegation, House Speaker Mike Schultz and Gov. Spencer Cox stood behind the president in support as he signed the executive orders in the Oval Office.

“We’re grateful that the president has made a determination that we need to rightsize these monuments,” Cox said during the signing ceremony.

This latest action follows a decades-long presidential tug-of-war over public land in southern Utah.

Bill Clinton first designated the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, and Barack Obama established the Bears Ears National Monument in 2016. Trump then shrank the monuments in 2017, but Joe Biden undid the reductions in 2021.

Most Utahns oppose shrinking the monuments, though, according to various polls.

Though it was Trump who ordered the downsizing of the monuments, many protesters in Salt Lake expressed their frustration about their congressional representatives and governor supporting the decision.

“Maloy, this land is not yours to destroy!,” the crowd chanted, directing their frustration towards U.S Rep. Celeste Maloy, who represents a large portion of southern Utah.

Katie Panushka, from Ogden, carried a small sign that read, “Mike Lee, are you ever capable of doing anything useful?” The sign, she said, had been dictated by her 94-year-old grandmother.

“I think that anybody who’s voted into office should listen to what the people want, and people don’t want this. 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,” Panushka said.

A small handful of other protesters carried signs with Lee’s face on the body of a mole rat.

Among many signs reading “Protect wild Utah” and “Utah stands with Bears Ears” were dozens of signs blaming the governor. “Cox sold out our sacred land to his buddy$ pocket$,” one read. At least a dozen others made phallic puns based on the governor’s last name.

According to Cox’s public schedule, the governor was not at his residence at the time of the Salt Lake City protest, and he was attending the “Days of ’47 Rodeo Appreciation Roundup and Cookout” ahead of Pioneer Day this Friday.

Outside of his home, some 300 protesters chanted “Vote him out!” in between “Save Bears Ears” and “This is what democracy looks like” chants.

Protests across Utah

The statewide protests were organized by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a party in an ongoing lawsuit aimed at protecting the monuments. Protesters met at the Governor’s Mansion in Salt Lake City and congressional district offices in Ogden, Provo, St. George and Moab.

About 25 people also gathered at the Bears Ears National Monument sign west of Bluff, holding signs that said “Land Back” and “Locals for Bears Ears.”

In Salt Lake, for more than an hour, the group protested outside of the mansion and cheered as passing cars honked in support.

“It warms my heart,” SUWA Executive Director Scott Braden said in an interview as horns blared in front of him. “People are mad, and they want to make sure that their elected officials are hearing that they’re upset that their voices have not been listened to in this process.”

The statewide turnout “wowed” Braden, who said although people are angry, “At their heart, they’re motivated by love.”

“We’re not powered by grievance,” he said. “We’re powered by love of place and just wanting to see these places protected.”

The downsizing of the monuments has been particularly upsetting for Indigenous communities who have been close to the land for thousands of years, activist and land protector Jessica Wiarda, a member of the Hopi-Tewa tribe, said in an interview outside the Governor’s Mansion.

“This administration has never considered us,” Wiarda said. “I am really frustrated that it’s like a ping-pong back and forth between administrations, and we’ve been speaking on that for a long time.”

Bears Ears, she noted, has historically been home to five separate tribal nations, which she said was remarkable given the historic tensions between some of those nations and a testament to how sacred the land is.

“The fact that that happened is amazing, and we can’t lose this monument,” she said. “It’s amazing to find a unifying thing like that for Indigenous people, let alone Indigenous to non-Indigenous people.”

‘We’re not going anywhere’

Around 130 people gathered outside the Washington County Administration Building in St. George, where Maloy and Lee have congressional offices.

“We are here to express our indignation, outrage and absolute disappointment in the leadership of both local and federal partners who allowed the rescission of 90% of the public lands around Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante,” Stacey Wittek, executive director of Conserve Southwest Utah, told The Tribune in an interview at the protest.

“If we don’t have these lands, we are giving up the real reason that we are the envy of the world,” she continued. “It’s not our coal mines. ... It is the most beautiful landscapes that we have to inspire the rest of the world.”

Members of tribes who have called the lands in the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante areas home for time immemorial, including the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah and the Navajo Nation, spoke up in defense of their ancestral homelands and the national monuments.

“As Southern Paiute, Grand Staircase is very, very important to us,” Autumn Gillard, coordinator of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition, said to the crowd that gathered. “It’s a part of our emergent stories. It holds sacred rock writings, ceremonial places, ancestral sites, sacred plants, pilgrimage trails that our ancestors have walked on for eons.”

She then called out Trump for saying during the signing ceremony last week, “you can virtually not even walk on it.”

“Guess what Southern Paiute have been walking on that land for thousands of years,” Gillard told the crowd of protesters. “And we’re not going anywhere.”

Members of the Kanosh Band of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah sang and drummed Monday night. “We are not protesters. We are protectors,” said Corrina Bow, an elder from the Kanosh Band and Southern Paiute.

“We don’t just do it for our generation,” she said, “we do it for every generation.”

“We’re here to protect the land that’s been stolen from us,” said Thalia Guerrero, member of the Kanosh Band and Southern Paiute, who was drumming and singing alongside Bow. “When we lost it, we didn’t lose that love and respect and fight for the land.”

Others who showed up expressed their love for public lands and their dismay in Utah’s congressional delegation for supporting the monument’s shrinking.

Lura Snow, one of the protest attendees, told The Tribune she has been guiding in Grand Staircase-Escalante for 20 years. She echoed Gillard and called out the “blatant falsehoods” from the Trump administration around previous access to the monument lands.

“If they utilize that land for mineral extraction, we won’t be able to recreate on it,” she said.

‘Show me your data’

In Provo, about two hundred protesters gathered outside the district offices of U.S. Sen. John Curtis and U.S. Rep. Mike Kennedy.

Kids and families wrote messages of “protecting wild Utah” in colored chalk on the sidewalk, while nearby protesters chanted “planet over profit” beside rushing cars on University Avenue.

Dave Tippets, an attendee of the gathering, said he holds Utah’s public lands very close to his heart. After volunteering with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance for years, Tippets has volunteered at various national parks, fixing damaged trails, cleaning out graffiti and taking care of the nature that thousands of people visit and enjoy every year.

He said he is tired of the political cycle, the shrinking and reinstating of the national monuments in Utah. Tippets said he wants consistency and a long-term solution for Utah’s public lands.

“Every time I hear a politician say, ‘This is what Utahns want,’ I say, ‘Show me your data,’” Tippets said. “And yet, these representatives continue to say they’re representing Utahns. They’re not.”

Sarah Hill, another protest attendee, said she is disappointed to see Utah’s public lands under attack.

“They’re always trying to privatize it, monetize it,” Hill said. “I’ve spent weeks in Escalante at a time. It’s a beautiful area and so is Bears Ears. Those lands shouldn’t be used for monetary purposes.”

‘The strength of being here together’

And in Moab, about 130 people gathered outside the Moab Information Center before spreading across the four corners of the intersection of Main and Center streets.

Carrying handmade signs and others made by SUWA, demonstrators waved at passing traffic, traded sporadic chants across the intersection and were met with frequent honks of support from motorists.

Devaki Murch, a Boulder, Utah, resident who said her property borders Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, said the region’s economy depends on the landscape but that the significance of protecting it extends far beyond tourism.

“It’s not just about money,” she said. “It’s about the heritage, the history, and the Native lands that have been sacred and have been here way before it was ours.”

Davina Smith-Idjesa, co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and Four Corners tribal program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, described the gathering as a space for collective grief and healing, saying coming together allowed people to recognize they did not carry the pain of the monument reductions alone.

“It is a day to express our anger, frustration, grief, and determination — whatever you are feeling, you have every right to express it,” she told the crowd. “Some may speak, some may cry, some may pray, others may stand quietly and take in the strength of being here together. Every one of those responses matters.”

Correction, 10:30 p.m. • This story has been corrected to identify that Dave Tippets is a volunteer with Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.