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SUBMITTED FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: A BEARS EARS MANAGEMENT PLAN | By Bill Keshlear

  Roughly two and a half years after President Biden resurrected and even expanded President Obama's original Bears Ears National Monument, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service unveiled on Friday (March 8) their joint Draft Resource Management Plan Environmental Impact Statement for the monument, a 678-page blueprint that would guide the agencies' land-use decisions for the next 20 or so years. It’s an important benchmark – Biden might call it a BFD. This is also submitted for your consideration: The BLM and Forest Service are currently seeking comments from the general public about the proposal. The comment period lasts 90 days. Then, the agencies will evaluate the merits of what John and Jane Q. Public (plus the special-interest groups) had to say. Months later they will approve something. However – and this is the elephant in the room that so far nobody’s talking about, at least publicly, a possible deal-breaker – any attempt to put a finalized plan into effect
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BIDEN'S CHAPTER IN THE BEARS EARS SAGA | By Bill Keshlear

On May 10, 1869, crews working for the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads completed the nation's first transcontinental rail line at Promontory Summit in northern Utah—a historic achievement in the timeline of the United States' development and one that is indelibly etched into the psyche of the West's Indigenous peoples. The story is expressed in many ways across Indian Country, perhaps most beautifully told through the traditional art of Navajo weavers. Many pieces—including some that are now priceless, museum-caliber heirlooms—depict locomotives chugging across the sage landscape, benignly interspersed among ancient symbols and motifs. The strands of wool are dyed from extracts of native plants and then threaded through a loom one at a time by an elder preserving a uniquely American art form. A darker interpretation involves the dreams of spiritual leaders—of trains rumbling unstoppable through wildlands, destroying everything and everyone in its path. "Th

A WIN FOR SAN JUAN GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY OR MILD REBUKE? | By Bill Keshlear

A state audit closes a chapter in the tumultuous saga of former San Juan County (Utah) commissioners and Bears Ears activists Willie Grayeyes and Kenneth Maryboy.   The conclusion of the Utah Legislative Auditor General’s performance audit reads: “Based on our combined experience of auditing a wide variety of public entities, the actions by the two county commissioners are unique in their disregard for transparency in the handling of some of their business.   “We believe the issues we identified warrant additional measures by the county in the future to demonstrate transparency to the citizens of the county, to restore trust, to protect county officers and to ensure that commission business is open and sufficiently transparent.”   The two Democrats lost bids in November to keep their seats on the commission – tenures enabled in large part by a federal judge who in 2017 declared that the districts in San Juan County disenfranchised Native American voters and ordered them redrawn. The ne