Beyond the Memes

Why UPLA Made Monument Reform a Top Priority

A monument boundary can change without transferring a single acre of public land. To understand what changed—and why UPLA fought for it—you have to read the plans.

Read the Documents, Not Just the Memes

UPLA does not form its positions by looking at memes. Neither should anyone else.

This is especially important when social media is filled with coordinated messaging from organizations that have repeatedly advocated restrictions on motorized recreation, including the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, The Wilderness Society, Conserve Southwest Utah, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Sierra Club.

When you see a claim from any organization—including UPLA—look beyond the dramatic photograph or headline. Read the plan. Study the map. Follow the acreage. Find the controlling management directive and see what it actually says.

The number of times a claim appears in a social-media feed does not make it true. Large national organizations have millions of dollars, paid staff, and sophisticated communications operations. UPLA can compete on the facts, but we cannot match those resources dollar for dollar.

A Lesson We Learned the Hard Way

We learned, sometimes the hard way, that effective advocacy begins long before a final decision is announced. It begins with the discipline and professional capacity to read the documents, understand the maps, and engage while the plans are still being written.

That lesson became clear in 2023, through an experience we have not talked about very much. When the Grand Staircase–Escalante planning documents came out, UPLA did not submit its own comprehensive technical comments. We shared information, passed along BlueRibbon Coalition’s action alert, and encouraged people to participate. But the truth is, we did not yet have the professional capacity to work through thousands of pages of federal planning documents and prepare the kind of comments the process demanded.

That experience was a wake-up call. If we wanted to do more than object after a decision had already been made, we had to become effective while the decision was still being written. As a result, we made two important changes. 1) We expanded our Board to include people throughout Utah and beyond our origin’s full size 4×4 community to include all forms of motorized recreation. 2) We secured a grant and hired Rose Winn as our professional Natural Resources Consultant. Those decisions changed what UPLA could do and paved the way for how we have acted since.

That UPLA made overturning the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante Monuments is not a new story, but it’s important you understand why we reached that decision to make it one of our top priorities

Building the Ability to Engage

Our involvement did not happen overnight. It developed over several years.

• In 2023, we alerted members to the Grand Staircase planning process and shared BlueRibbon Coalition’s action alert. We were engaged, but we were not yet equipped to prepare comprehensive technical comments of our own. Read UPLA’s 2023 Grand Staircase article.
• That gap became more serious as the federal government moved ahead with the 30×30 initiative, the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, and other sweeping land-use plans that eliminated 2100 miles of OHV routes in Utah in just two years.
• UPLA recognized that our Board needed to be more representative of our OHV community, so we expanded the Board to include members throughout Utah and from all motorized users.
• UPLA recognized that we needed professional assistance in analyzing the thousands of pages in each plan and to prepare detailed, substantive comments that would be used to not only influence the decision, but also to provide a strong legal basis to challenge bad decisions in court. We responded by securing a grant from the Utah State OHV Program and hired Rose Winn as our Natural Resource Consultant.
• By 2024, UPLA prepared a 60-page technical comment on the Bears Ears plan, conducted a joint webinar with BlueRibbon Coalition, published side-by-side comparisons of the alternatives, and given the public practical tools for submitting substantive comments. Visit UPLA’s Bears Ears resource center.
• Our comments have never opposed protecting cultural resources. We argued that protection and responsible access can coexist, that the agencies had not considered a true recreation-focused alternative, and that the proposed alternatives depended too heavily on closures and restrictions.
• When the final Resource Management Plans were signed in 2025, they confirmed many of our concerns. Rescission, boundary reduction, administrative reconsideration, or successful court action became one of UPLA’s highest priorities for 2026.

We pursued that priority through public comments, public education, financial and organizational support for BlueRibbon Coalition’s legal work, direct requests to the Trump administration, collaboration with state and local governments, congressional advocacy, and meetings with White House and federal officials. We have reported many of those efforts on our website, but the public record tells only a small part of what took place behind the scenes.

What the Grand Staircase Plan Actually Said

The Grand Staircase–Escalante numbers are especially important because they come directly from the signed 2025 Resource Management Plan. The plan allocated:

• 1,245,600 acres as OHV closed.
• 620,000 acres as OHV limited.
• Zero acres as OHV open.

The OHV-closed allocation covered about 66.6 percent of the 1.87-million-acre monument. Put plainly, roughly two-thirds of the expanded monument was placed in an OHV-closed category before the route-by-route travel planning was finished.

“OHV limited” does not mean unrestricted motorized use. It means vehicles are confined to routes specifically designated for motorized travel, and individual routes within those areas may still be closed in the later travel-planning process.

The 2025 RMP called for new travel management plans, but it temporarily retained most route designations from the 2020 plans. That is why someone could visit Grand Staircase after the RMP was signed, drive many familiar roads, and conclude that nothing had changed. The routes may have looked the same that day, but the policy governing their future had changed.

The 2025 RMP made the controlling land-use decisions first. Later travel management plans were intended to apply those decisions to individual roads and trails within the remaining one-third allocated as OHV limited.

 

Once the RMP designated an area as OHV closed, a later travel plan generally could not turn that same acreage into an OHV-limited area. The broad decision had already been made upstream, even though many of the route-by-route consequences were not yet visible on the ground.

BlueRibbon Coalition captured the point in one sentence: “Monument closures are a process, not an event.” Read BRC’s Bears Ears analysis.

That distinction matters. An agency can establish the governing restrictions in an RMP, postpone many route-level consequences until later travel planning, and then point to temporarily open trails as proof that nothing has changed. But the higher-level plan has already narrowed what can be considered later.

Figure 1. Grand Staircase–Escalante 2025 OHV area designations. Red areas are allocated as OHV closed; cream areas are OHV limited to designated routes. Source: Bureau of Land Management.

Bears Ears Restricted More Than OHV Use

The 2025 Bears Ears RMP reached far beyond motorized recreation. On BLM-administered lands, it allocated 591,185 acres as OHV closed and 483,917 acres as OHV limited. Another 46,348 acres of Forest Service land within the monument are designated wilderness and closed to OHV use.

Together, that is about 637,500 acres of OHV-closed land across the BLM and Forest Service portions of the monument. This is why readers may see two different figures: about 591,000 acres when only BLM land is counted, and about 637,500 acres when the Forest Service wilderness acreage is included.

The plan also included:

• A roughly 775,000-acre Remote Zone restricting mechanized as well as motorized recreation. “Mechanized” includes bicycles.
• Individual permits and seasonal restrictions for motorized travel in Arch Canyon.
• Motorized group-size limits affecting club rides, guided trips, and larger family outings.
• Restrictions on organized and competitive motorized events.
• Limits on dispersed camping and provisions for future designation of approved campsites.
• A monument-wide prohibition on recreational target shooting.
• Restrictions involving mountain bikes, climbing anchors, dogs, drones, geocaching, casual mineral collecting, and other activities.

UPLA represents motorized off-highway recreation, but our review does not stop there. These plans affected hunters, campers, cyclists, climbers, organized clubs, people with disabilities, and families who depend on a vehicle to reach the backcountry. When we find restrictions that affect other forms of outdoor recreation, we often address those issues in our comments too.

No Land Was Transferred to Utah

One of the most repeated claims is that the monument reductions transferred—or will automatically transfer—millions of acres of federal land to the State of Utah. They did not.

The proclamations did not transfer a single acre to the State of Utah. Land removed from monument status remains federal public land managed by the BLM or Forest Service.

 

The Bears Ears proclamation reduced the monument from about 1.36 million acres to 121,096 acres. The Grand Staircase–Escalante proclamation reduced that monument from about 1.87 million acres to 181,541 acres. Changing a monument boundary is not a change in ownership. The excluded lands remain federal public lands.

Any future sale, exchange, lease, mining approval, or other disposition would require a separate process under applicable law. The proclamations themselves approved no such transaction. Read the language in the Grand Staircase–Escalante proclamation and the Bears Ears proclamation.

Can a President Modify a National Monument?

Presidents have modified national monument boundaries many times over more than a century. In May 2025, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the Antiquities Act permits a President to alter or revoke an earlier monument declaration.

The 2025 Justice Department opinion provides the administration’s legal basis for that authority. Once again, don’t take my word for it, read the Justice Department’s opinion and see if it makes sense to you.

Additionally, the Tenth Circuit’s June 2026 decision did not rule that the Bears Ears or Grand Staircase expansions were unlawful, and it did not decide whether one President may reduce a monument created or expanded by an earlier President. It held that the district court had erred by refusing to examine whether President Biden exceeded the limits Congress placed in the Antiquities Act.

Those limits include the requirement that protected objects qualify as historic landmarks, historic or prehistoric structures, or other objects of historic or scientific interest, and that the reserved land be confined to the “smallest area compatible” with protecting those objects.

The court sent the case back for further proceedings. UPLA’s article on the Tenth Circuit decision explains the distinction. The Justice Department’s interpretation may now be tested in further litigation, and we hope the broader question eventually reaches the United States Supreme Court so the scope of presidential authority under the Antiquities Act can finally be settled.

What About Mining and Mineral Leasing?

The proclamations make excluded lands legally available for mineral leasing and mining claims, subject to valid existing rights, existing withdrawals, and other applicable laws. That deserves a straightforward explanation.

The proclamations do not approve a mine, issue a mineral lease, authorize ground disturbance, or guarantee that development will occur. Each of those actions will require separate applications, agency decisions, and environmental and cultural-resource review.

Mineral potential also does not mean commercially viable development is imminent. Much of this land saw little or no large-scale modern development immediately before its monument designation, and many leases or claims never become operating mines.

UPLA wants these remarkable public lands protected and beautiful. We also believe BLM and Forest Service lands should be managed under the multiple-use and sustained-yield direction Congress established. Administrative rules should not elevate one interest by sweeping every other lawful use aside.

We cannot know today how many viable proposals will emerge. When they do, UPLA will evaluate them individually and take positions that defend OHV access, protect important routes, and preserve the resources that make these landscapes worth visiting.

Hunting Is Defined in the Proclamations as an Express Priority

The proclamations direct federal agencies to consider maintaining and improving public access for recreation and hunting. That does not guarantee that every road will stay open or that every hunter will immediately have better access. The actual results will depend on the resource management and transportation plans that follow, but without the burden of the 30×30 or the Minimization Criteria clouding it.

What we can say is that hunting and recreational access are once again expressly identified as management priorities, rather than being treated mainly as threats to monument resources.

What Comes Next

The July 2026 proclamations were an important victory, but they did not finish the work. New resource management plans, transportation plans, route inventories, administrative decisions, and court proceedings will determine what the changes mean on the ground. We also hope to persuade Congress to act to clarify intent of the Antiquities Act.

What happens next will depend on whether people who care about responsible access stay involved while the new plans are being written.

UPLA will be there—reading the thousands of pages of documents, analyzing the maps, keeping you informed and educated, and submitting substantive comments. We will continue fighting for decisions that protect these landscapes while keeping them accessible to the public.

If you value this work, please make a donation today and give as generously as you can. Your support helps us obtain professional analysis, participate in federal planning, educate the public, and defend responsible access.

 

The future of public access will not be decided by the loudest meme. It will be decided in the plans—and by the people willing to show up before those plans become final.

Sources and Further Reading

Bears Ears National Monument Poses Devastating Loss to OHV — UPLA’s 2022 warning.

Grand Staircase Comments Due by November 9 — UPLA’s 2023 engagement and the capacity gap that experience revealed.

Fight Back to Keep Our Roads and Access Rights — UPLA’s decision to support and help fund BlueRibbon Coalition’s legal work.

Bears Ears RMP Resource Center — Rose Winn’s analysis, the joint UPLA–BRC webinar, comment tools, and UPLA’s 2024 participation.

Department of Justice Responds to Trump’s Inquiry — The 2025 legal opinion and its implications.

A Turning Point for the Antiquities Act — UPLA’s explanation of the June 2026 Tenth Circuit decision.

Two Years of UPLA Advocacy Helped Shape a New Direction — UPLA’s meetings, objectives, and response to the July 2026 proclamations.