Thanks for clarification.
Half of Utah is already a national something or other. At some point you have to draw a line and say, okay, we’ve saved the best stuff, now folks have to work for a living ...
Bears Ears NM (not NP) contains some important cultural areas that can easily be preserved with small but well-chosen enclaves of the previous large, sprawling area set aside. Although it’s scenic to a point, this is not the breathtaking world class scenery you will find in Utah national parks around the region.
Bears Ears is the name of two adjacent hills that look rather like a bear’s ears on the horizon. You get a good view of them driving into the nearby Natural Bridges National Monument. There are a lot of Anasazi ruins in the general area in both that NM and Bears Ears, also nearby Hovenweep and over the state line in Mesa Verde (CO).
I think these ruins can easily be preserved without also taking thousands of acres of economically useful land out of service. The same principle applies to Grand Staircase-Escalante NM near Bryce Canyon NP. They have left all the scenic and economically non-viable area in the monument, and removed a few parts that were being leased to ranchers anyway, so it makes little difference to the land use to change the boundaries there.
This from somebody who loves the back country and especially the wild areas of GSENM. I have visited before and after the changes and it seemed to be exactly the same place with the same things happening, a big herd of black Angus roaming free on a parcel of land between Kodachrome Basin SP and Grovenor’s Arch (which remains protected in the National Monument). Roads are not for the faint hearted back in there and you need four wheel drive and a close relationship with a divine entity.
Most of southern Utah is so wild anyway that whatever you call it, the landscape remains the same and timeless. Mazes of canyons between the Bears Ears and the Colorado (where it meets the Green and begins to broaden out into Lake Powell). Probably will never see much if any human impact, three day hike from end of a dirt road to the river.