WASHINGTON Flanked by a group of Utah officials at the Capitol in Salt Lake City, President Donald Trump on Monday signed a pair of proclamations to dismantle two of the states national monuments a move that opens the door for oil, gas and other development on public land that has been protected.

The boundary of Bears Ears National Monument , a 1.35 million-acre landscape named after a pair of buttes and home to thousands of Native American archeological and cultural sites, will shrink by about 85 percent. The 1.87 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument , the largest land national monument in the country, will be cut roughly in half .

Ive come to Utah to take a very historic action to reverse federal overreach and return the rights of this land to your citizens, Trump said during his speech.