"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.”"
