Chris Riccardo, Midwest Organizer for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), will talk to us about recent developments involving the Bear’s Ears and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments.
The spectacular Bear’s Ears and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments comprise a rare and fragile ecosystem in a land that is both sacred to indigenous peoples and of great historical and archeological importance. The Trump administration signed a proclamation on July 13, 2026 slashing the size of these by 90%, removing protected status for nearly 3 million acres of public land and dissolving cooperative tribal management structures. A raft of new bills being put forward by Republican lawmakers would relax regulations on public land. One such bill would open national parks and monuments to off-road vehicle use that would damage fragile landscapes and disrupt wildlife habitat, not to mention desecrate remote and culturally significant locations.
The SUWA, the Sierra Club, citizens and environmentalists are joining to push back against these rollbacks and encroachments. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Sierra Club and other organizations have stated that they will challenge these reductions in court. The America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, which is currently before Congress, would protect over 9 million acres of wilderness land in Utah.
Find out how you can support these efforts to protect one of the last remaining pristine wilderness areas in the United States.
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