For decades, presidents have increasingly used the Antiquities Act to create massive national monuments in the final hours of their administrations, encompassing hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of acres of public land. While the law was intended to protect specific historic, cultural, and scientific resources, it clearly states that monument designations should be limited to the "smallest area compatible" with protecting those resources.
Unfortunately, many modern monument designations bear little resemblance to that standard. Instead of protecting a discrete archaeological site, historic structure, or scientific feature, recent administrations have designated enormous landscapes that place vast areas of public land under monument management. These designations often create uncertainty for recreation, restrict multiple-use management, and provide a framework for future road closures and reduced public access.
Why We Must Review Oversized National Monuments
The monuments identified in this action alert encompass more than 800 million acres of land and water — to put that into perspective, Alaska is 424 million acres so these monuments make up almost two Alaskas. Monuments of that size are difficult to argue that every acre is necessary to protect the specific objects the Antiquities Act was intended to preserve.
BlueRibbon Coalition supports the protection of important cultural, historic, and scientific resources. However, we also believe public lands should remain accessible and managed for multiple use whenever possible. Protecting a resource does not require locking up entire landscapes or limiting the ability of Americans to responsibly recreate on and enjoy their public lands. Remember, there are numerous laws that protect habitat, species, and the environment regardless of monument status such as the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, etc.
Many of these monument designations have become flashpoints because they place millions of acres under increasingly restrictive management despite local opposition and long histories of recreation, grazing, energy development, and other traditional uses. Americans should not lose access to public lands simply because monument boundaries were drawn far larger than necessary.
That is why we are calling on Congress, the Administration, and the courts to review the following oversized national monuments and either rescind them or reduce their boundaries to better comply with the Antiquities Act's requirement that monuments be limited to the smallest area compatible with protecting the resources at issue. These monuments are controversial for many reasons including the sheer size, how and when they were created.
Circle area is drawn to scale: its size relative to the U.S. equals the monuments' acreage relative to the total area of the United States (about 2.43 billion acres, all 50 states).
Large land monuments
- Mojave Trails National Monument, 2016, 1.6 million acres, CA
- Grand Canyon–Parashant National Monument, 2000, 1,010,000 acres, AZ
- Basin and Range National Monument, 2015, 704,000 acres, NV
- Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks National Monument, 2014, 496,330 acres, NM
- Avi Kwa Ame National Monument, 2023, 506,000 acres, NV Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, 2023, 917,618 acres, AZ
Last days of an administration
- Sonoran Desert National Monument, 2001, 486,400 acres, AZ
- Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, 2001, 377,000 acres, MT
- Governors Island National Monument, 2001, 22 acres, NY
- Chuckwalla National Monument, 2025, 624,270 acres, CA
- Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, 2025, 224,676 acres, CA
Most controversial
- Bears Ears National Monument, 2016, 1.36 million acres, UT
- Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, 1996, 1.87 million acres, UT
- Gold Butte National Monument, 2016, 296,937 acres, NV
- Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, 2000, 114,000 acres, OR/CA
Alaska monuments (Antiquities Act carve-out)
- Wrangell–St. Elias National Monument, 1978, 11 million acres, AK
- Gates of the Arctic National Monument, 1978, 8.5 million acres, AK
- Noatak National Monument, 1978, 5.8 million acres, AK
- Misty Fjords National Monument, 1978, 2.3 million acres, AK
- Yukon-Charley Rivers National Monument, 1978, 1.7 million acres, AK
- Admiralty Island National Monument, 1978, 1.1 million acres, AK
Massive marine monuments
- Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, 2006, 372.8 million acres, HI
- Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, 2009, 313.8 million acres, U.S. Pacific Islands (territory)
- Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, 2009, 60.9 million acres, MP
- Rose Atoll Marine National Monument, 2009, 8.6 million acres, AS
Other monuments from the 2017 federal review
- Carrizo Plain National Monument, 2001, 204,000 acres, CA
- Giant Sequoia National Monument, 2000, 328,315 acres, CA
- Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, 2015, 344,476 acres, CA
- San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, 2014, 452,000 acres, CA
- Sand to Snow National Monument, 2016, 154,000 acres, CA
- Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, 2000, 293,689 acres, AZ
- Ironwood Forest National Monument, 2000, 128,917 acres, AZ
- Craters of the Moon National Monument, 1924, 753,000 acres, ID
- Hanford Reach National Monument, 2000, 194,450 acres, WA
- Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, 2013, 242,555 acres, NM
- Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, 2000, 176,000 acres, CO
- Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, 2016, 87,563 acres, ME
- Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, 2016, 3.1 million acres, Atlantic Ocean (federal waters)
What Monument Status Actually Does to Access and Use
Roads, Trails and OHV Access
Many will claim that monuments don't actually remove or restrict access. History says otherwise. Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), one of the longest-standing monuments on this list, is proof. Once a monument is established, the managing agency must draft a resource management plan (RMP). It's this plan — not the monument designation itself — that has quietly closed off roads and access over time. RMPs layer on recommended and actual wilderness study areas (the latter created through agency discretion, not law), backcountry designations, OHV closures, visual resource management areas that force roads to be reduced or eliminated, and areas of critical environmental concern. In other words, monument status is never the only thing removing motorized access. Monument status is the gateway to a stack of additional designations that do. That's exactly what happened to the Little Desert OHV area, one of the few open OHV areas left in all of Southern Utah and home to generations of locals' memories, which was shut down through the Grand Staircase RMP. Even the monument's own proclamation concedes the point: it notes that Grand Bench, within this nearly 2-million-acre monument, is already one of the most remote locations in the entire landscape — a tacit admission that there was little road access to begin with, and even less left once the RMP took effect.
Another claim that will be made is that a monument doesn't stop multiple use — that it doesn't automatically shut down mining, grazing, and hunting. Let's look at examples for each of these uses.
Mining
Small mining claim owners that existed before monument designations typically still maintain their claims, acting in good faith and paying their yearly maintenance fees. However, because of monument status, in order to actually mine their claims you still have to get permits, which is nearly impossible as agencies will deny you because the surrounding area is "protected." BRC is challenging the designation of the Chuckwalla National Monument on behalf of a mining claim owner.
Grazing
In regards to grazing, within GSENM, AUMs have been drastically reduced since the monument's creation. In the most recent resource management plan, the BLM even retired multiple grazing permits, meaning that areas that once provided opportunities for local ranchers to raise beef cattle will never be allowed to do so again. In Bears Ears, there exist nearly 60,000 permitted AUMs on the monument, but only about 34,000 are actually being billed, highlighting how drastically grazing has been reduced in practice.
Hunting
As for hunting in GSENM, wood gathering (for camp fires) is now completely prohibited, making it difficult to conduct backcountry hunts. Roads that used to exist are no longer open and usable to access hunting grounds within the monument's 1.9 million acres. Group size limitations also make family hunts that continued for generations impossible, due to restrictions on party size within certain backcountry areas. In Bears Ears National Monument, the management plan bans all recreational shooting across the monument's 1.36 million acres — a prohibition that complicates traditional camp shooting and sighting-in rifles in the field. More significantly, the plan expands OHV closures from approximately 436,000 acres under the prior plan to over 637,000 acres, with an additional 483,000 acres under limited OHV restrictions. At Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada, the Grapevine Canyon area is closed to hunting entirely.
Fishing
For fishing, when President Obama designated the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, commercial fishing was prohibited. Even after a temporary reprieve under the first Trump administration, President Biden's 2021 proclamation reinstated the ban, this time with a hard phase-out date of September 15, 2023 for lobster and red crab fishermen who had worked those waters for generations. Fishermen who had built their livelihoods on those grounds were simply told their time was up. Separate from the monument proclamation, a deep-sea coral amendment closed approximately 82 percent of the monument's area to bottom-tending commercial fishing gear — a fishing heritage ended by monument management.
Major Legal Development: Courts Are Now Open
In June 2026, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a landmark decision in Garfield County v. Trump — a case BlueRibbon Coalition helped bring alongside Garfield County, Kane County, the State of Utah, and individual Utah residents. The case directly challenged the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante proclamations as exceeding presidential authority under the Antiquities Act.
For years, the federal government has argued that a president's monument decisions are essentially untouchable — that courts have no business questioning whether a designation covers legitimate "objects" or whether its boundaries meet the "smallest area compatible" standard written into the law. A district court had agreed with that view and dismissed the case entirely.
The Tenth Circuit reversed that dismissal. The appeals court held that federal courts do have the authority to review whether a president exceeded his statutory limits under the Antiquities Act — both by designating things as "objects" that fall outside what the law allows, and by reserving far more land than the "smallest area compatible" provision permits. The case now returns to the district court, which must decide for the first time in any circuit whether Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante went beyond what the law allows.
The court did not rule that the proclamations are unlawful — that question is still to be decided on remand — but it confirmed that these decisions are not simply immune from judicial scrutiny. This is the first time an appellate court has affirmed that oversized monument designations can be tested and potentially struck down in court, not just left to the discretion of whichever administration is currently in office.
This ruling matters for every monument on this list. It means the legal theory BRC and its allies have pushed for years — that "smallest area compatible" is a real, enforceable limit and not just a suggestion — now has real traction in the federal courts.
Take Action to Protect Public Land Access
The goal is to ensure monument boundaries are reasonable, lawful, and consistent with the intent of the Antiquities Act while preserving public access, multiple use, and recreational opportunities on America's public lands. The Trump Administration has already identified administrative authority to reduce monument boundaries or rescind monuments outright, and the courts have now confirmed that judicial review of oversized designations is a live and viable path as well. With administrative action, congressional legislation, and litigation all now on the table, there is real momentum to correct these boundaries. Let's encourage all three branches to finish the job.
Take action today and make your voice heard!
