SUBMITTED FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: A BEARS EARS MANAGEMENT PLAN | Background and analysis 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 and Environmental Impact Statement, Volume 1, a blueprint that would guide the agencies' land-use decisions for the next 20 or so years. Volume 2 lists citations, a glossary and appendices.
(This was updated April 22, 2024, to include additional information and clarifications of earlier versions.)
The draft plan is an important benchmark; President Biden might call it a BFD.
It's hard to overstate the precedent-setting scope of what the plan envisions. For one, if the plan is approved and survives possible legal and political challenges, monument management would override a section of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1978, BLM's “organic act” that established the agency’s multiple-use and sustained-yield mandate.
More than that, "the
Management Plan is a model for federal agencies to incorporate tribal knowledge
and expertise into land management plans and practices. Tribal knowledge and
involvement in managing these lands is needed now more than ever," wrote Christopher Tabbee, co-chair of the Bears Ears Commission, in a press release just after the draft plan was unveiled. The commission is a formal creation of the Obama and Biden administrations, but it receives funding that originates from a non-governmental environmental philanthropy called Resources Legacy Fund.
BLM would prioritize protection of the "objects" within Bears Ears NM boundaries. The agency would no longer be required, at least in managing Bears Ears, to "harmoniously" manage renewable energy development (solar, wind, other); conventional energy development (oil and gas, coal); livestock grazing; hard-rock mining (gold, silver, uranium and other resources); timber harvesting; and outdoor recreation (such as camping, hunting, rafting and off-highway vehicle driving).
Here's the rationale (See pages 2-7 and 2-8 of the draft proposal):
"Section 302 of FLPMA states that public lands should be managed under the principles of multiple use and sustained yield 'except that where a tract of such public land has been dedicated to specific uses according to any other provisions of law it shall be managed in accordance with such law.' Proclamation 10285 dedicates the lands within BENM to a specific use, therefore the lands reserved within the Monument boundary must be managed in a manner that protects the objects for which the Monument has been designated. In other words, within BENM, typical multiple use management is superseded by the direction in Proclamation 10285 to protect Monument objects. Multiple uses are allowed only to the extent they are consistent with the protection of the objects within the Monument."
The draft plan spells out in mind-numbing detail the reasons the monument exists, which are:- to protect monument objects in large, remote, rugged and connected landscapes;
- to protect the historical and cultural significance of this landscape;
- to protect the unique and varied natural and scientific resources of this landscape;
- to protect scenic qualities, including night skies, natural soundscapes, diverse and visible geology, and unique areas and features;
- to protect important paleontological resources;
- to ensure that management of the monument incorporates Tribal expertise and traditional and historical knowledge related to the use and significance of the landscape;
- to provide for uses of the monument (so long as they're consistent with protection of BENM objects).
Volume 1 of the draft plan analyses 105 "issues" – 21 areas with five alternatives each to mitigate possible impacts of those issues. (See table 1-2, page 1-5 of the draft plan.) Volume 1 is 678 pages long; Volume 2 is 574 pages.
It was written by 120 people: an interdisciplinary team from the BLM and Forest Service with assistance from the Bears Ears Commission (See note below), SWCA environmental consultants out of Salt Lake City and their subconsultants, including EMPsi – a consulting firm with offices in seven Western states that specialize in "environmental engineering and compliance, natural and cultural resources issues, public engagement, GIS support and integration and project management."
Representatives of Pueblo of Zuni, Ute tribe and Ute Mountain Ute tribe also participated in crafting the draft plan. Voices of the Navajo Nation were Davina Smith, a Democratic candidate for Utah House District 69; Willie Grayeyes, former San Juan County, Utah, county commissioner; Hank Stevens, vice chair of the nonprofit Utah Diné Bikéyah; and James Adakai, former chair of the San Juan County, Utah, Democratic Party.
For Smith and Grayeyes especially, participation in writing the draft plan is a high point of years-long Bears Ears advocacy. Their inclusion along with other long-time activists erases doubts over the Biden administration's commitment to not only Native involvement in Bears Ears NM management, but to Native American affairs in general.
- Davina Smith is a prominent advocate for Native American rights and tribal sovereignty. She's been a staffer at the tribal-affiliated nonprofit Utah Diné Bikéyah; a San Juan County Democratic Party canvasser; a member of the BLM's (Bears Ears) Monument Advisory Committee; a board member at PBS TV station KUED in Salt Lake City; executive director of the environmental nonprofit Salt Lake Water Protectors; and tribal coordinator for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.
- Willie Grayeyes has been at the forefront of tribal efforts to preserve Cedar Mesa (more commonly known now as Bears Ears) since at least 2010, when a small group of Navajos, including Grayeyes, organized after a
call from former U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, seeking tribal involvement in public land management. They launched their initiative with financial and technical assistance from the nonprofit Round
River Conservation Studies, based in Salt Lake City, as well as the David and
Lucile Packard Foundation. Following Round River's guidance, the group morphed into Utah Diné Bikéyah. It took an
assertive, high-profile lead in efforts to preserve Bears Ears. Here's how Leonard Lee, vice chairman of the group at the time, characterized the organization's point of view: "We don't consider ourselves as stakeholders. … We're the
landlord."
In 2018, Grayeyes was elected to a seat on the San Juan County (Utah) Commission with full support of Utah Democrats. A nonprofit, Rural Utah Project, run by a former state party official was, in effect, Grayeyes’s campaign organization. His tenure was stormy, and he failed to win re-election. The Utah Legislative Auditor General's performance audit released at the end of his term seemed to vindicate his critics in the county: "Based on our combined experience of auditing a wide variety of public entities, the actions by the two commissioners (Grayeyes and his fellow Navajo activist Kenneth Maryboy), are unique in their disregard for transparency in the handling of some of their business."
Grayeyes's Utah Diné Bikéyah and its national allies have had enormous influence in advocating for Native American interests connected with use and management of Bears Ears and public lands nearby. For instance, Jake Palma, an alumnus of UDB, is BLM's manager of Bears Ears NM. He's moderating a meeting of BLM's Bears Ears Monument Advisory Committee at the upper right in the photo below.
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. After that, agencies will evaluate what John and Jane Q. Public had to say, as well as commercial groups and nonprofits and their lobbyists and lawyers. By January 2025, the RMP / EIS will be approved (or scrapped) and take effect (or be modified). But whatever happens is - and this is the mother of caveats - contingent on results of November's presidential election.
_____________
The draft proposal grants the five tribes of the Bears Ears Commission –
Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Zuni Tribe, Hopi Tribe and
the Navajo Nation – an advisory role in management that's a notch or two
higher than what myriad other
stakeholders get.
The commission was created by Obama's original Bears Ears NM proclamation during the final weeks of his administration as part of an effort to grant the tribes a long-sought-after "seat at the table" of monument management. It died under Trump, but Biden restored it 2021. The commission’s work has been propped up by a closely allied nonprofit, the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which provides "operational support, technical expertise, land-planning capacity, communications expertise and funding." The coalition in turn is a beneficiary of the nonprofit, Resources Legacy Fund, according to the coalition.
Resources Legacy's assets were just over $113 million when it reported its 2022 finances to the Internal Revenue Service.
Resources Legacy funded a proposed monument management plan written by Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants out of Cortez, Colo., in June 2022 on behalf of the coalition, about eight months after Biden restored Obama's monument and more. It defines the tribes' vision of monument management. In some ways it's a precursor of the BLM and Forest Service draft Resource Management Plan / Environmental Impact Statement currently under consideration, especially tribal involvement in management through some sort of entity independent of federal land agencies and the importance of incorporating equally Indigenous knowledge and mainstream Western science (See page 2 of the coalition proposal):
"The purpose of this plan is to present the context in which Tribal Nations seek to be regularly and fully engaged with Federal land managers. To be fully engaged, the Tribes must not be considered merely as another stakeholder that can offer comments to plans that are already designed and mostly completed. It is not enough that tribes have 'a bigger say' in policy and practice of monument management. ...
"The Tribal Nations of the BEITC are knowledge-sovereign, or that their way of knowledge is in equal standing with mainstream Western scientific methodologies. Knowledge sovereignty is inextricably tied to cultural, social, and political sovereignty and associated relationships of ecological health and well-being and should be understood from a traditional knowledge perspective. ..."
_____________
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox expressed disappointment over what he called the federal land agencies' lack of coordination with the state and counties.
However, numerous agencies within the Cox administration weighed in. Utah’s Public Lands Coordinating Office, the Trust Lands Administration, Grand County, San Juan County and the cities of Bluff, Blanding and Monticello were consulted by BLM and the Forest Service, and they signed off on memorandums of understanding (MOUs) to ensure various land management plans of various levels of government aligned, according to the draft plan. (See pages 4-2 and 4-3.) The State Historical Preservation Office was invited to participate, but did not respond.
"The (BLM and Forest Service) agencies have collaborated with other federal, state and local agencies throughout the RMP/EIS (Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement) development process. ... State and local governments, other federal agencies, and Tribal government involvement has proven most helpful throughout scoping, alternatives development, impact analysis, and public and agency comment periods.
"The agencies conducted a detailed review of relevant state and county plans ... and found that the RMP/EIS is generally consistent with state and county plans." (See page 1-8 of the draft plan.)
The management of mineral resources is the main inconsistency between the draft plan and state and county plans currently in place, according to the draft management plan. "The State of Utah and San Juan County have not notified the agencies of inconsistencies with their plans over the course of the planning process, as described in 43 CFR 1610.302(c) (Code of Federal Regulations)." (See page 1-9.)
On April 18, a few days before the annual commemoration of Earth Day, the Interior Department announced it had adopted a rule that places a higher priority on conservation of land BLM oversees than it has in the past. The agency manages about 245 million acres, mostly in 12 western states.
The rule calls for protection of the land, restoration of the places that have been harmed in the past and includes a promise to make informed decisions about future use based on “science, data, and Indigenous knowledge,” which not coincidentally is what the Bears Ears draft management plan evokes. BLM will now auction off leases not only for drilling, but also for conservation and restoration.
In other words, it supplements BLM responsibilities, which historically have been primarily focused on helping businesses drill for oil and gas, mine and graze cattle and sheep on public land.
The relationship between land managers of the federal government and Utah's Republican lawmakers has been characterized by open hostility for quite awhile. BLM's new rule is the latest in what the state of Utah perceives as outrageous land management by the federal government of land owned by the federal government. It will "impair the ability of BLM employees and their partners at the state and local level to effectively improve and restore Utah’s landscapes and watersheds."
With Cox campaigning to see his name on November's ballot and keep his job, he would not be expected to make nice with anything associated with Joe Biden. Moderation has smothered many ambitions of Republican politicians in Utah. The political career of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. is a case in point.
The tribes are co-stewards in the draft management plan. That is, stewardship is shared “to ensure Tribal knowledge and local expertise is reflected in the agency decision-making process." (See page 2-5.) The plan goes into quite a bit of detail describing the importance of incorporating traditional Indigenous knowledge into Bears Ears NM management. (See pages 3-2 to 3-5.)
Until recently, the term generally used to describe the scope of tribal involvement in Bears Ears NM land-use management was "co-management," which was a bit of a legal and rhetorical sleight of hand because it seemed to imply some level of tribal policy-making authority, possibly equal to that of BLM and Forest Service.
The president, using the limited authority of the Antiquities Act, cannot grant that kind of authority to entities beyond the executive branch of the federal government. Only Congress can do that, and given the state of affairs in Washington, D.C., we can expect that to happen only when hell freezes over. More recent terminology in the evolution of the concept is “sovereign-to-sovereign cooperative” agreements.
While the Bears Ears Commission cannot enact policy, under Biden's monument proclamation and the way it’s been interpreted by land agencies within his administration, members of the commission and 19 other tribal representatives were empowered to write their aspirations into the draft management plan. They received assistance from outside (the government) consultants hired by the federal agencies and staff of the agencies. Those sentiments have more than a good chance of becoming part of the rules and regulations that govern monument use.
It's a subtle work-around, but will it be sustained by future presidents?
_____________
Cash-strapped federal agencies often partner with nonprofits to reach their goals. In managing the monument, for example, BLM works closely with Bluff-based Bears Ears Partnership (formerly Friends of Cedar Mesa) to tap the organization's reservoir of passionate conservation-minded volunteers. They keep an eye out for mischief on remote trails and help with mitigation projects. BEP even helped publish maps of the area for BLM. They’re specifically designed to guide tourists on where to go and how to visit without destroying too much. BEP maintains an educational visitor center in Bluff. The nonprofit fills a conservation and educational niche that otherwise would mostly go unfilled. Its role is consistent with what the proposed management plan outlines. (See page 2.6.)
The nonprofit has been prominent and aggressive in attempting to block drilling and mining in southeastern Utah, well beyond the boundaries of the monument. One of its current projects is evaluation of expanded federal protection of "the lands in-between" Bears Ears NM and Canyons of Ancients National Monument in southwestern Colorado, which could stymie oil and gas and mining development in southeastern Utah between the La Sal mountains and the Utah strip of the Navajo Nation. Royalties that theoretically would help fund social services would not exist. So, theoretically, taxpayers would have to pick up the slack.
BEP's core supporters include National Parks Conservation Association, Grand Canyon Trust, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Grand Staircase-Escalante Partners, Conservation Lands Foundation, Wildlands Network, Archaeology Southwest and Sierra Club. Several of the organizations have played key behind-the-scenes roles in the multi-million dollar, multi-year political campaign to create the monument and provided technical and financial support to tribal representatives. Other backers include Utah Rock Art Research Association, Utah Diné Bikéyah and The Wilderness Society.
Tribal partners include Pueblo of Acoma, All Pueblo Council of Governors, Pueblo of Zuni and Pueblo of Cochiti.
______________
Organizations with backgrounds in Western/scientifically oriented preservation of cultural resources and representatives of commercial interests (for example, oil and gas drilling, mining, private landowners, local businesses, outdoor recreation and tourism, hunting and livestock permit holders) were not granted co-steward status, although their concerns are addressed throughout the draft management plan – especially those whose expertise and interests lie in protecting the area's paleontological, archaeological and geological resources. (See pages 3-14 to 3-18.)
Specifically:
"The federal agencies acknowledge the responsibility to protect the ceremonies, rituals, and traditional uses that are part of the Tribal Nations' way of life on these lands since time immemorial, both in the land use plan and through the plan's implementation. ...
"All action alternatives would give consideration to Traditional Indigenous Knowledge in the management of BENM and would include BENM-wide management to provide for the continued preservation not only of the physical landscape but also the cultural and spiritual landscape, including that which is visual and auditory." (See page 2-5.)
Co-stewardship status conferred on tribal interests amounts to a long-overdue acknowledgment by the federal government of Native American interests. Many Navajos and other tribes in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest consider the preserve sacred, a place where they can practice and preserve traditions. Obama's and Biden's political support could be a sign that at least some high-ranking federal officials who oversee Native American affairs, including those who themselves are Native American (Charles Sams III, director of the National Park Service, and his boss, Secretary of the Interior Department Deb Haaland, come to mind), might finally be coming to terms with their predecessors' horrendous history. At least in the Biden and Obama administrations and among some Democrats in general.
_______________
It's important to note that the management plan is an interpretation of what Biden and before him Obama outlined in their presidential proclamations. It's not necessarily something rooted in policy preferences of career or politically appointed bureaucrats.
 |
| Greg Sheehan |
Sheehan served 14 months before resigning. Several months later, he was hired as director of the BLM in Utah. Environmental groups were furious. They said he was too close to industry and local governments, which have long pushed for more access for mining and drilling. But as one of his first acts at BLM, Sheehan canceled a set of oil and gas lease sales that had been scheduled near Arches and Canyonlands national parks.
(Disclaimer: A few years ago, I worked for a short time editing and producing DWR's weekly fishing reports and publishing the agency's booklets on Utah's Byzantine fishing and hunting regulations. Sheehan was director when I worked there. I talked to him at length about myriad issues during a Q&A BLM, Forest Service and their consultants held on April 18 to give the public a sense of what the agencies have in mind in managing Bears Ears. He was careful with his words. He didn't recognize me and apologized for what he might've perceived as a sleight to me. It wasn't. I'd encourage anyone interested the workings of land agencies to attend these kinds of things. They give you a chance at face time with the people who actually make things work. There's no PR filter, or at least not much.)
Normally, I’d say BLM and Forest Service careerists and even political appointees such as Sheehan would not hesitate to devise and implement rules and regulations that align with a proclamation from any president they happened to serve. Their jobs are supposedly nonpartisan. Sheehan was first appointed by Trump and now works for Biden. But nowadays, I’m not so sure. Trump, the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, has plans that, if implemented, could cause havoc across agencies within the executive branch of the federal government. It’s possible careerists who wrote Biden’s Bears Ears proposal would not be around, replaced, if at all, by hardline Trump loyalists hellbent on … well, I shudder to think.
____________
The proposed plan, with its commitment to cultivating meaningful Native involvement in public-land-management, is precedent-setting because Bears Ears NM is not part of any Native American reservation. An act of Congress has not granted any tribe authority to manage anything within monument. However, the cultural, religious and historical significance of the landscape is beyond question. Therein lies the tribes’ claim. Legal scholars call this “de recto” sovereignty or sovereignty by moral principal or right, as opposed to "de jure" (by law) or "de facto" (by practice).
In a case of past as prologue, descendants of K'aayélii attempted to reclaim historical lands in the Bears Ears region in the 1960s, but their efforts were rebuffed by the Interior Department and federal courts.
Many activists and legal scholars see tribal involvement in management of the monument as an important step in regaining tribal
sovereignty over ancestral lands – in this case Bears Ears but also across the country – that has gradually eroded through "laws, military force, coercion and sometimes fraud" over the past 150 years or so.
In other words:
"Through the imposition of its laws, military force, coercion, and sometimes fraud, the federal government relied on treaties to acquire legal title from tribal nations and, by the mid-1800s, could lay claim to an immense land resource. Across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the U.S. then pursued various policies intended to promote the destruction of tribal nations in favor of expanding non-Indigenous settlement. Among these policies, the federal government actively divested itself, such as through grants to private interests like railroads and homesteaders, of much of the land it had acquired. The admission of additional states to the union, particularly in the western United States, also came with grants of previously federal lands. In the wake of these efforts, concern grew over the need to conserve and protect for future use at least some of the nation’s remaining federal lands. In response, Congress and the President began reserving some federal lands from further divestment, actions that led to the creation of forest reserves, national monuments, national parks, and wildlife refuges from the remaining federally owned lands, as well as the maintenance of other unclaimed lands by the United States as public domain. These measures would ensure generations of Americans could enjoy federal public lands, which have come to define important parts of the national character and identity."
Alternatively, current residents of San Juan County, Utah, the location of Bears Ears, believe their stake to the same land is equally valid. Many of them are descendants of Mormons who settled the area at great peril.
The Hole in the Rock trek could justify that claim, at least according to those who regularly commemorate that remarkable feat. The trek is one of several stories that helped create a mythology of sorts related to Mormon pioneers overcoming extreme hardship to serve their church and claim a wilderness as their own. The faithful walked, some rode, for six months in 1879 with their wagons in tow and their cattle trailing behind across some of the roughest terrain in North America to settle southeast Utah. The route east descended a narrow gap in the rocks – widened by pioneers using pick axes, shovels and blasting powder – then led across the Colorado River. They pressed on until coming to what they thought could be a likely townsite along the San Juan River. There they established the town of Bluff.
Most of the trail cuts through what is now Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.
The ordeal of the Willie and Martin handcart companies in 1856 and their rescue is another story that lives on. And another is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s organization of a military unit, the so-called Mormon Battalion, whose members left families and friends during their journey west to escape religious persecution and volunteered for service in the U.S. Army during the Mexico-American War in 1846. While it never saw combat, the unit made a historic march of nearly 1,950 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Diego via Santa Fe. The two frontier towns were part of Mexico at the time. They learned about irrigation and other survival skills that helped enable successful LDS settlement of Utah. Some even worked the Northern California gold strike of 1849 before returning to their families in the Salt Lake Valley, which by then had completed the cross-continent trek. Yes, some Mormons were 49ers.
It irks many members of the Republican-dominated LDS Church that Democratic presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden created Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, respectively, across that hallowed ground, doing little to acknowledge their faith tradition. The presidents didn’t have to, instead they used the unilateral authority of the Antiquities Act. It was especially irksome to many Utahns because in 2010, about the time Sen. Bennett enlisted Navajos to participate in an effort to protect Cedar Mesa (Bears Ears), Obama’s then-Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar toured Utah, promising kumbaya and no monuments.
“We're going to do some really good things together. But they're going to be done also in a way that's in the best interests of the people of Utah, so it's not going to be people 2,000 miles away calling the shots for the future of the public lands of Utah.”
By the end of 2016, Salazar’s successor, Sally Jewell, and Obama had other ideas after Donald Trump became president.
Adding insult to injury, Utahns were ceremonially snubbed. All three presidents declined in-person, in-Utah proclamation-signing ceremonies.
Oh, the resentments run deep and strong. Unforgotten.
–––––––––––––––––––
When Jon Jarvis, Obama’s director of the National Park Service, visited the University of Utah a couple years ago he said he regretted that a collaborative process in creating Bears Ears National Monument involving all local stakeholders had not been initiated.
But the kind of strategy that Jarvis suggested – good-faith collaboration developed "over a thousand cups of coffee" – was, in fact, implemented, just not by him or any other land manager within the federal government.
A group of ranchers, environmentalists, Native Americans, OHV riders, miners, hunters and archeology buffs came together in 2015 as the "San Juan County Lands Council," hammered out a management proposal, invited public comment and then gave it to then-Rep. Rob Bishop, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, and Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who represented southeastern Utah in Congress at the time. The congressmen inserted the council's proposal into a massive bill: Bishop's Public Lands Initiative. And there it died.
As I wrote in an op-ed, "at ground level, the Lands Council was a good-faith exercise — tainted in the way every citizen advisory board in our representative democracy is tainted. At another level, however, the process became another cynical example of politics as usual."
Members of the council might've been sandbagged. The final version of (Bishop's) PLI bill was significantly different and more politically charged than what participants in the process had worked to create. Tommy Beaudreu, Jewell's chief of staff, said there was "real skepticism about how serious PLI process was, despite how much work – real substantive work – had gone into it." Beaudreau's comments came during a panel discussion in 2018 at Johns Hopkins University (50:33 in the video). He described how Obama signed off on a monument proclamation only after letting Bishop's efforts in Congress play out.
The Lands Council process was locally driven and "respected the rich tapestry of rural life," wrote essayist Nathan Nielson, who elegantly captured the conservative critique of the monument's creation (and, ironically, Jarvis's concerns as well). It was published by High Country News. For the most part, members of the group knew each other or their families, their histories and, for better or worse, their reputations. Importantly, the “social scope” was relatively small.
“Park rangers are cordial but
largely unknown entities, rotating in and out. Relationships break and
heal, hearts listen and learn, only when the social scope is small. A
bigger land boss from Washington would disrupt this exchange by
elevating itself as the arbiter. Rural folks see themselves as actors
shaping the world around them, not as spectators watching things
happen.”
At the other end of the political spectrum, efforts of those San Juan volunteers were bulldozed by a sophisticated, multi-million-dollar, multi-year national campaign funded by environmentalists from beyond what Nielson refers to as the local “social scope.” Their goals apparently were always loftier than outcomes derived from democratic processes or merely monument designation.
“If the tribes and pueblos are successful in the (monument) proposal with the coalition of conservancy groups, it will set the platform for other protection issues outside of reservation land,” according to Natasha Hale, Grand Canyon Trust Native American program manager, who was quoted by the Four Corners Free Press in May 2015. (Four Corners Press ceased publication in January.)
Beaudreu, who became deputy secretary of Biden's Interior Department, said the proposal put together by San Juan County residents formed the basis of the proclamation that Obama signed off on. To the chagrin of many Native activists, it was actually smaller than the one ghostwritten for the tribes by the late Colorado law school professor Charles Wilkinson and his students then submitted for consideration to the Interior Department in 2015. Wilkinson was longtime advocate for Native rights and preservation of public lands. He helped write President Clinton's proclamation that established the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996.
“We tried to hew to the PLI (Lands Council’s) proposal," said Beaudreu. The (congressional) delegation from Utah had put forward a map saying this is an area that needs to be protected. They had different ideas about what level of protection should go into it, but we felt we couldn’t argue with a straight face that there wasn’t consensus about the area.” The quote comes at 58:20 in the video.
The work of San Juan County residents was mostly ignored by regional and national media that produced a virtual avalanche of uniformly one-dimensional stories about Bears Ears from about 2015 through 2020.
It's quite possible that the mainstream narrative, the origin story, surrounding creation of Bears Ears National Monument missed details that would render much of it fiction, or at least grossly incomplete. An analysis and commentary by Stacy Young takes a deep dive into Beaudreu's candid comments at Johns Hopkins. It was published in the iconoclastic Canyon Country Zephyr by the late Jim Stiles. Young's lengthy outtake is worth a read. Beaudreu's comments were never widely reported by local media in Utah even though local activists participated in the panel discussion or by national media even though they originated at a prestigious university in Washington, D.C.
"Of course, Bears Ears was not created in a generic political environment, but in the aftermath of the acrimonious 2016 election. This detail about the timing of the monument designation turns out to be fairly important yet is consistently neglected in the common Bears Ears narrative. The story usually goes that the monument was designated and then came the provocative and unpredictable Trump, but that actually gets the order of events backwards. Donald Trump was already President-elect when the designation was made.
"To me, on election night 2016, the decision to designate a large national monument in San Juan County went from being a questionable theoretical proposition to a clear act of environmental negligence. There was no plausible scenario at that point in which the new monument would be implemented with any enthusiasm. A more realistic expectation was for the catastrophe that has unfolded.
"It turns out Obama’s staff at Interior made a similar assessment of the situation in late 2016, but, remarkably, rather than conclude that designating the monument had become a colossally bad idea, they determined that it was the most responsible thing they could do.
"We know this for sure because of a presentation at John Hopkins University that involved several monument advocates. Much of the information presented is well-worn terrain, but there are also a number of novel and surprising claims made by all of the panelists.
"One such nugget comes about an hour into the presentation, when Tommy Beaudreau, Chief-of-Staff of former Interior Secretary Jewell, explains that the decision to launch the monument directly into the current political thresher was done with full knowledge that what has happened would happen. He acknowledges that the administration knew in late 2016 that the monument proclamation would be received as an act of provocation if not a declaration of total war. They knew there was no chance that the monument as designated would be properly funded or any other constructive steps taken toward its implementation. They knew the ensuing controversy would be protracted and the outcome of the fight uncertain. They knew this chain reaction would negatively impact the landscape and its cultural resources. And still they set it in motion.
"The obvious question is this: how could anyone make a risk assessment even superficially similar to the one outlined at the top yet reach a completely opposite conclusion about what constitutes a responsible course of action? The answer, it turns out, depends on whether you’re trying to protect a place or a particular interpretation of the Antiquities Act."
Based on Jarvis's experience of over 40 years working for the Park Service and dealing with the impacts national parks have on communities adjacent to the federal preserves – unregulated tourism, stress on basic public infrastructure and overwhelmed local law enforcers – he said a lasting solution to protecting the area likely could never be imposed top-down through a unilateral presidential proclamation using the authority of the Antiquities Act.
He was right. It's been political and legal ping-pong since at least 2015 and shows no sign of ending.
Last year, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox vowed to press on in a notice of appeal filed after a federal judge dismissed the state's and several counties' effort that if successful could’ve scuttled the whole thing.
“This case will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court and today’s ruling helps us get there even sooner. The clear language of the law gives the president the authority only to designate monuments that are ‘the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected,” he said. “Monument designations over a million acres are clearly outside that authority and end up ignoring local concerns and damaging the very resources we want to protect. We look forward to starting the appeals process immediately and will continue fighting this type of glaring misuse of the Antiquities Act.”
Cox's comments are from August 2023. Any final review of the ruling that prompted those comments would not take place until after November's presidential election. But given former President Trump's bellicose rhetoric so far in the campaign, there's no reason to believe Trump, if regaining the White House, would not unilaterally restore the version of the monument he created in December 2017. It’s possible he’d do something much more extreme.
"Trump has promised that if he returns to office, he will purge the nonpartisan civil service we have had since 1883, replacing career employees with his own loyalists. He has called for weaponizing the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense, and his advisers say he will round up and put into camps 10 million people currently living in the U.S., not just undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers but also those with birthright citizenship, tossing away a right that has been enshrined in the Constitution since 1868," writes historian Heather Cox Richardson.
___________
The draft Resource Management Plan / Environmental Impact Statement of BLM and USDA Forest Service offers five alternatives that place varying degrees of restrictions on land use that, if adopted, fully funded and enforced, could go a long way toward mitigating further damage to the unique and other-worldly Bears Ears landscape. Of the five, Alternative E is generally the most restrictive.
Federal agencies and the tribes prefer Alternative E because:
"It would emphasize Traditional Indigenous Knowledge and a holistic approach to stewardship of this sacred landscape that addresses tangible and intangible aspects of the Monument. Alternative E also incorporates both the Western science perspective and the cyclical nature of management including Indigenous circular ways of knowing and seasonality, as well as recognizes spiritual, cultural and ancestral connections to the landscape and protects Indigenous traditional uses of the Monument." (See page 2-8 of the draft management plan.)
Alternative E likely would be the most controversial and the most difficult and costliest to enforce.
No areas of the 1.36-million acre monument would be designated specifically for recreation-focused management, instead four landscape-scale management zones would be created. They are Front Country (18,995 acres), Passage (7,498 acres), Outback (265,299 acres) and Remote (1,072,587 acres).
The zones could allow BLM and Forest Service to more efficiently allocate scarce funds to create and maintain infrastructure. For example, the Front Country Zone (I'll call it the "Sacrificial Zone") would be the focal point for high-visitation sites near communities or paved routes and require the highest level of infrastructure support: pit toilets, garbage pick-up, interpretive sites, developed campgrounds and so on. On the other hand, the Outback and Remote zones, by far the largest of the four, would see the least amount of development for recreation. Here's how it's framed in the draft management plan: The Remote Zone would "provide a natural, undeveloped, and self-directed experience for visitors while limiting motorized or mechanized access."
A fact sheet summarized how the draft plan could affect recreation, hunting, motorized vehicle use and livestock grazing. Here's what the draft plan actually says. It brims with caveats (See pages 3-429 to 3-432):
- "Under Alternative E, redundant hiking trails and social trails would be closed when new hiking trails are designated, unless the redundant and social trails are consistent with the protection of BENM objects."
- "Alternative E would implement elements such as permits and
fees (as necessary) and user number limitations across the entire Monument
to limit or control recreational uses that impact Monument objects."
- "Under Alternative E, the agencies would work with the BEC (Bears Ears Commission) to develop a Monument permit system required for all private day and overnight use in all canyons designed to educate users about the cultural landscape of BENM, Monument rules and regulations, and where penalties and fines apply for permit violations. Alternative E would implement area closures as necessary to prevent recreation-caused damage."
- "Under Alternative E, pet restrictions would be similar to those under Alternative B, with additional prohibitions for entering or touching BENM objects such as structures, relict plant communities, and culturally important habitat."
- "Alternative E would not allow dispersed camping within 0.25 mile of any developed campground. Additionally, dispersed camping sites and areas would be inventoried and monitored by the agencies and would be removed and reclaimed, as necessary, to protect BENM objects."
- "Dispersed camping would also be closed in or near riparian areas and water sources if impacts to those resources are detected from camping activities."
- "Permits would be required for recreational river trips on the San Juan River, and day and overnight use in all canyons in the Monument."
- "Swimming or bathing in in-canyon stream and pool habitat
would be prohibited in BENM except where such prohibition would be
inconsistent with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or other
applicable laws."
- "Under Alternative E, new climbing routes that require the placement of bolts, anchors, or fixed gear would require approval from the agencies, in collaboration with the BEC, to determine if the route is appropriate to protect BENM objects, including cultural resources and wildlife."
- "Alternative E would designate 794,181 acres as OHV limited
and 569,971 acres as OHV closed."
- "Recreational shooting activities would be prohibited in all areas of BENM under Alternative E. This prohibition does not apply to the use of firearms in the lawful pursuit of game."
Like their counterparts at national parks, national forests, other monuments, wildlife preserves and wilderness areas, Bears Ears NM managers just don't have enough money to effectively enforce laws designed to protect archeological artifacts and flora and fauna or safeguard the tens of thousands of OHVers, mountain bikers, grave robbers, recreational adventurers, rock climbers, vandals and clueless, Winnebago-driving, Doritos-munching tourists attracted to the fragile landscape-scale magnet called Bears Ears by multimillion-dollar ad campaigns.
Given the political climate in Washington, D.C., that's not likely to change any time soon. Creation of the four recreation zones seems to be the agencies' recognition of that reality.
It's also a tacit admission that nearly all of the preserve – roughly 1.33 million acres out of the 1.36 million-acre total – would at best receive only nominally more protection than if it had never been created.
What's more, any attempt to beef-up law-enforcement capability of the BLM and Forest Service would likely meet fierce resistance from members of right-wing militias – so-called sagebrush rebels – and their politically powerful supporters in Utah and across the West, who have not forgotten BLM's 2009 heavy-handed raid in Blanding, Utah. The Los Angeles Times called it "A STING IN THE DESERT." Federal law enforcers likely have not forgotten either. Since then, BLM has taken wait-and-watch, non-confrontational approaches to the 2014 standoff at Bunkerville, Nev., and the 2016 occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon.
Patrick Donnelly, who serves as Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, suggested the failure of BLM to act also weakens the agency’s ability to enforce its rules and regulations across the 245 million acres it manages.“Is BLM adequate to the task of managing public lands in the West if they’re getting bullied around by a couple of cowboys out on the range? It calls into question some of BLM’s management authority, and that’s a real problem,” Donnelly said. “Letting this go unaddressed for a decade is a complete abdication.”
When Jon Jarvis visited the University of Utah in 2018, I asked him what he thought were his biggest achievements and disappointments as Obama's director of the National Park Service. He said he was proudest of adding 26 units to the system. However, he said the biggest failure was an inability to provide adequate funds to protect, preserve and maintain those units.
____________________
HOW'D WE GET HERE: Background commentary and analysis (Links are in bold face)
"The search for common ground and coming up empty:" A Q&A with the producer of a KUED documentary on Bears Ears
EXCERPT: “Battle Over Bears Ears” is a one-hour documentary produced by KUED in Salt Lake City. According to the station’s website, it “explores the deep connections to place and the vast cultural divides that are fueling the fight over how the Bears Ears Monument is protected and managed."
KESHLEAR: What surprised you about the residents of San Juan County, both for and against the monument?
GREEN: There’s a deep love of the place among residents of San Juan County – almost at a cellular level.
Recognition of our shared humanity
"Uncommon ground revisited"
The Grand Staircase Story: morality of mining, no-compromise environmentalists and unreliable sources
EXCERPT: Yet even the remote possibility of (the coal mine) becoming a reality has unleashed a backlash of NIMBYism (“not in my backyard”). The refrain goes something like this: “We like our cell phones. Electric cars can power a clean transportation future. Just don’t go digging holes in our desert preserve for the stuff that makes ’em work. Dig for cobalt someplace else.” Currently, the only “someplace else” in the United States is about 500 miles north at a mine poised to begin operations in the Idaho Cobalt Belt.