Patagonia joins lawsuit against Trump’s Utah national monument reduction

The outdoor retailer Patagonia on Wednesday joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its executive orders to shrink the sizes of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.

Patagonia joined a coalition of Native American groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups to reopen two 2017 lawsuits against President Trump’s first administration over similar executive orders cutting both national monuments’ public lands.

The new orders, signed in July, reduce both monuments by more than 90 percent. Both reductions open much of the land to companies looking to drill for oil and mine for uranium, among other development plans.

“The shrinkage is an attempt to force secession of federal land to the state and allow private companies to extract natural resources from that land,” the retailer said in a statement . “Generations of Utah leadership have obsessed over federal lands and spent years — and millions of dollars in ad campaigns — pushing for local control.”

The company said the orders “betray Tribal sovereignty and scrap years of work to create groundbreaking management plans for some of the most culturally significant places in the country,” according to a statement.

“And the orders are illegal,” the retailer added.

The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.

Patagonia stated that public lands are critical to millions of employees of the $1.2 trillion outdoor industry “and those who use them to connect with their culture and the natural world.”

It cited legislation signed into law for the respective monuments under former presidents Clinton and Obama, as well as the 1906 Antiquities Act signed into law by former President Theodore Roosevelt, a staunch conservationist, as to why both sites are intended to be protected.

Former President Biden restored the lands of both national monuments in October 2021.

“The legislative history of the act clearly reflects a focus and intent to protect prehistoric Indigenous archaeological and cultural sites,” Patagonia stated. “The land now known as Bears Ears was specifically called out in the legislative history for protection.”

The two national monuments are each protected by an intertribal coalition established to co-steward the public lands. Navajo Nation, the largest indigenous nation in the U.S., along with the Hopi Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, are part of both coalitions, among other tribal groups.

“All of us must support the Tribes, leaders and organizations working together to protect the places we love,” Patagonia stated. “Or prepare to lose them forever.”

The Trump administration is also eyeing a land swap that would give part of Yosemite National Park to a private company operated by real-estate developer and investment firm Kingsbarn Realty Capital to connect its property with a park service road to facilitate commercial development.

“Trump is hell-bent on destroying everything that is sacred and beautiful about this country,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) wrote Friday on the social platform X . “California won’t stand by while he grifts our public lands.”