Native tribes and conservation groups are preparing to sue the Trump administration after the president signed orders to sharply reduce the size of two national monuments in Utah.

Republicans are celebrating the move, while tribes and environmentalists say it strips protections from culturally significant public lands. Governor Spencer Cox and Utah's congressional delegation joined the president to celebrate the signing of the orders.

Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, called conservatives' vision for the state's wildlands "wrong-headed."

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"Mike Lee's vision of the American West is not one with sweeping federal public lands. His view of the American West is Utah and other western states should be the South Carolina of the West, with almost no public land," Bloch contended.

Trump reduced the area of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by about 3 million acres from their current boundaries, roughly 90% of the original protected area.

Polling shows 65% of Utah voters support keeping Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante protected as national monuments.

Utah Republicans have long pushed to reduce or eliminate the two national monuments to allow mining and other economic development on the land. Trump first reduced the monuments in 2017 during his first term, but Democratic President Joe Biden restored the areas.

Bloch believes Trump is misinformed about the value of the monuments.

"I think he really didn't know what he was talking about. The line that everybody is hooked into that, as he understood it, you couldn't hunt, fish, or walk in the monuments, and that is so demonstrably false," Bloch stressed.

The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, formed by the Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, Navajo Nation and Ute Tribes, called it a major setback to an extraordinary collaboration on public lands between tribal nations and federal agencies.

Bloch added it was a bitter pill for the tribes to swallow.

"The tribes are angry. They are really disappointed," Bloch emphasized. "It's just a lot of pain from yet another attempt by the nation to try and undo their footprint."