by mfa-admin | Jun 29, 2020 | Uncategorized
A snake star entwined itself tightly around the branches of an octocoral. Photo: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Deep Connections 2019
This month, amid a pandemic and racial reckoning, President Trump found the time to continue his attack on our public lands and waters. He announced that commercial fishing would be allowed in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, undoing a key protection for the only marine monument in the Atlantic. Allowing industrial-scale commercial fishing in the monument isn’t just harmful to the ocean – it’s also illegal.
Act today: call on your legislators in Congress to protect the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts.
Plain and simple, President Trump does not have the legal authority to eliminate or significantly reduce protections in our national monuments.
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts monument was created by President Obama in 2016 using the Antiquities Act. Presidents of both parties have used the Antiquities Act for over 100 years to protect areas of scientific, cultural, or historic value on land and in the sea. However, it doesn’t allow presidents to decimate previously established monument.
Trump’s rollback of the monument’s core protections will harm the unique deep-sea corals, endangered whales, and other incredible wildlife living in the monument. It will harm us, as the ocean already bears the brunt of the climate crisis.
Add your name to the petition calling for continued protections for this incredible marine monument.
Our public lands and waters are part of our identity, and they help define who we are as a nation. Stand with us in support of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
by mfa-admin | Apr 29, 2020 | Uncategorized
In the midst of the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, our partners continue to make moves on the ground to safeguard our special wild places. Today, we bring you updates from two treasured places that have remained at the heart of the national monuments conversation: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
So what’s new? And what can you do?
“The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument’s vast and austere landscape embraces a spectacular array of scientific and historic resources. This high, rugged, and remote region, where bold plateaus and multihued cliffs run for distances that defy human perspective, was the last place in the continental United States to be mapped. Even today, this unspoiled natural area remains a frontier, a quality that greatly enhances the monument’s value for scientific study. The monument has a long and dignified human history: it is a place where one can see how nature shapes human endeavors in the American West, where distance and aridity have been pitted against our dreams and courage.” — From President Bill Clinton’s proclamation establishing Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on September 18, 1996. Photo: The Cockscomb, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument courtesy Tim Peterson.
Monuments For All and Coronavirus: What You Need To Know
“With over a million acres of public land, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument might seem like the perfect place for social distancing right now. After all, its canyons are some of the most remote places in the country. However, it follows that remote places like southern Utah have extremely limited health care services,” Grand Staircase Escalante Partners wrote on Instagram. “In order to slow the spread of COVID-19 and therefore not overwhelm local resources and protect local vulnerable populations, we encourage potential visitors to stay closer to home and enjoy local parks this spring. We do not take this recommendation lightly, as our gateway communities depend on the tourism economy, but we feel strongly that it is incumbent upon each of us to act in the best interests of the immunocompromised and elderly in this unprecedented moment in history.”
Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition added on Instagram, “Outdoor adventures can wait. Help us protect our Indigenous and rural communities, as well as the Bears Ears cultural region, by simply staying home. We can all contribute to communal well being by supporting the needs of others during this time. Thank you for your understanding, and please help spread the word!”
With new information and regulations coming out daily, for southern Utah please check in with local organizations like Grand Staircase Escalante Partners,Utah Diné Bikéyah, and Friends of Cedar Mesa as well as the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and tribal governments to determine when it may again be appropriate to visit the region. For other monuments and national parks, please look up local organizations and local government entities for updated guidelines for safe and healthy recreation in the face of this pandemic.
You can also see Utah Diné Bikéyah’s website for more COVID-19 resources and links to ways you can help support indigenous communities in the region.
Photo: Bears Ears rock art panel courtesy Tim Peterson
Protecting Bears Ears and Grand Staircase National Monuments in the Courts
On April 10, sovereign tribal nations, local and national groups filed new documents in a pair of lawsuits challenging President Trump’s 2017 decision to cut more than 2 million acres of public lands from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments. The plaintiffs in the federal court cases argue that only Congress can reduce a monument’s boundaries and that Trump overreached his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906.
Plaintiffs wrote, “Did the Antiquities Act authorize the President to dismantle an existing national monument … leaving countless objects of historic and scientific interest stranded outside its dramatically reduced boundaries? The answer is no.”
Keep up to date on the latest developments on the court cases with Native American Rights Fund and Grand Staircase Escalante Partners.
For an in-depth update on what is happening on the ground with Bears Ears, check out Tim Peterson, Grand Canyon Trust’s Cultural Landscapes Program Director’s blog post:
“Bears Ears is a place that challenges our perception of time, laying bare the bones of the Earth, holding the fossils of life long before humans, and bearing the crucible of cultures infinitely older than America. As the battle to restore the monument stretches into its third year, it helps to remember the 600 generations. We are well reminded of that sense of constancy to stay our ephemeral fears over the monument’s fate. I am often asked about Bears Ears, and I answer that it must and will be restored, and the true gifts that it has to give are not even yet known.”
“From earth to sky, the region is unsurpassed in wonders. The star-filled nights and natural quiet of the Bears Ears area transport visitors to an earlier eon. Against an absolutely black night sky, our galaxy and others more distant leap into view.” — From President Barack Obama’s proclamation establishing Bears Ears National Monument on December 28, 2016. Photo: Bob Wick // BLM
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments are both world-renowned hotbeds of paleontological research, world-class destinations for outdoor recreation and natural beauty, and major economic drivers for small businesses in these regions. Bears Ears has been home to Hopi, Diné, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni peoples since time immemorial, and was designated as a national monument in 2016 to protect countless archaeological, cultural, and natural resources, including the wealth of traditional knowledge that Native people hold for this region. It is the first tribally requested national monument.
During the federal comment period in 2017, millions of Americans called out with a clear and powerful voice: We stand with our national monuments. We will continue to fight with them to safeguard Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante as they were rightfully designated.
by mfa-admin | Jul 26, 2019 | Uncategorized
MOAB, Utah (July 26, 2019)—Utah’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) continues to rush forward a plan for the illegally reduced Bears Ears National Monument that completely ignores the more than one million acres removed by an unlawful Executive Order and leaves most of the culturally and scientifically significant lands unprotected. In a final plan released today, the BLM proposes to manage even the remaining fifteen percent of Bears Ears National Monument in a way that doesn’t sufficiently protect cultural resources and sacred sites, leaving them more vulnerable to destruction than ever before.
Just as numerous reports have shown that the reductions were in fact focused on drilling and mining, this proposed plan shows that the BLM misled the public when claiming that a reduced boundary would allow them to better manage and protect what they considered to be the most important historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest monument objects in the Bears Ears region.
The planning process was started under former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke despite protests from Congress, and newly appointed Interior Secretary David Bernhardt has continued to ignore calls by Congress to halt planning while also disregarding active litigation challenging the Trump administration’s initial executive action.
Secretary Zinke claimed in a monuments review interim report that a reduced boundary would allow the agency to “concentrate preservation resources,” and in his final report to President Trump, he claimed to be concerned that “that increased visitation can threaten the objects…monuments that span up to a million acres or more are difficult to protect.” This final management plan proves that this was never about resources or practical ability to protect sites, but about a concerted effort to remove protections at every opportunity.
The nearly final plan released by the BLM fails in a number of ways:
- Protection of cultural resources is the primary reason for Bears Ears monument designation. However, the plan chooses several management actions that would have significant impacts on cultural resources. The agencies highlight that they seek to protect identified cultural sites, but the vast majority of the monument has not yet been surveyed for cultural resources.
- Bears Ears is home to world-class recreation opportunities. These opportunities should be preserved, but also managed so they don’t impact monument resources like cultural and paleontological sites. A Recreation Area Management Plan is scheduled to be implemented 3 years after the cultural resource management plan is put in place, meaning it will likely be at least 5 years from the final decision—a timeframe that would result in damage and degradation.
- Bears Ears is home to some of the most unique paleontological resources in the world. Under the agencies’ preferred plan, surface-disturbing activities—including rights-of-way and potential new off-road vehicle routes—would be allowed in areas with high potential for yielding fossils, and fossil-bearing areas that are currently protected would be opened to development. The agencies’ plan provides few restrictions on camping, target shooting, hiking and biking around paleontological resources. Moreover, under the agencies’ preferred plan monitoring would only take place annually and only loss of or damage to significant fossil resources would trigger mitigation measures. This would violate federal law as Section 6302 of the PRPA requires agencies to conduct surveys regardless of the potential impact to fossils from other uses.
Quotes from local, national, and scientific organizations:
Neal Clark, Wildlands Program Director, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance:
“As though reducing Bears Ears National Monument by nearly 85% wasn’t damaging enough, now the BLM’s plan ignores the concerns of Tribes, archaeologists, conservationists, and the vast majority of the public by rolling back protections of the remaining 15%, creating a monument in name only. This plan means that one of America’s richest cultural landscapes continues to lack the protections it deserves.”
Phil Hanceford, Director of Agency Policy & Planning, The Wilderness Society:
“The BLM is moving rapidly with limited public input towards their goal of stripping protections from some of the nation’s most treasured and sensitive lands. The Bears Ears region continues to be threatened by the hasty, illegal, and un-scientific effort by a few to open as much of our public lands to drilling and mining as possible. People should be outraged.”
Brian Sybert, Executive Director, Conservation Lands Foundation:
“This rushed and reckless plan ignores Tribes tied to this sacred and irreplaceable cultural landscape. It also ignores the majority of Westerners who opposed slashing its size and who understand the value our public lands hold for recreation, science and rural economies that depend on them for the long-term. It puts to rest any argument about the administration’s real motives in rolling back protections for Bears Ears and millions of other acres in the West: they are opening the door to development for their friends in industry–no matter the price for everyone else.”
Tim Peterson, Cultural Landscapes Program Director, Grand Canyon Trust:
“National monuments are meant to protect our shared history and heritage while leaving a legacy for future generations. The Trump administration not only defiled our shared history by unlawfully reducing Bears Ears, they’re showing contempt for our legacy by choosing at every turn in their proposed plan to give protection short-shrift. The way in which they’ve added the insult of this detestable plan to the injury of slashing Bears Ears is deeply disturbing, and it cannot stand.”
- David Polly, Immediate Past President, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology:
“To further his own political ends, Trump cut out most of the fossil sites for which Bears Ears was created, a loss to science and a loss every American. He did not have the authority to make the cuts and the management plans must be rewritten to protect the entire monument. They should be suspended until the courts have ruled on the boundaries like Congress itself has requested.”
Rose Marcario, CEO and President, Patagonia:
“The Executive Order abolishing Bears Ears was illegal and no management plan for these lands should proceed until resolution of the lawsuits. The President’s effort to reduce Bears Ears’ boundaries was done at the behest of mining and oil and gas industries. And this plan is another demonstration of this administration’s preference for extractive industry profit at the expense of the American people. Bears Ears contains iconic landscapes, sacred places, and priceless artifacts and this plan puts all of them under threat. Not to mention this is a colossal waste of time because BLM will have to create a plan for the full Bears Ears as originally designated after we win the lawsuit.”
Heidi McIntosh, Managing Attorney of Earthjustice’s Rocky Mountains Office:
“If we win the legal fight to restore Bears Ears National Monument, this plan will just be 800 pages of wasted effort. Even in the parts of Bears Ears that President Trump left intact, he’s planning on putting destructive activities before the American public’s interests. Bears Ears is not the kind of place for chaining thousands of acres of forest or stringing up utility lines. These are wild, sweeping monument lands.”
Erik Murdock, Policy Director, Access Fund:
“The Bears Ears region deserves landscape-scale protections. The reduction of Bears Ears National Monument is a direct threat to the Bears Ears landscape, traditional values and recreation opportunities. The region contains some of the best sandstone rock climbing in the world because of its rock quality and inspirational setting. Access Fund believes that an appropriate management plan should be developed after the litigation is resolved and the boundaries of the monument are reinstated.”
Colin O’Mara, President and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation:
“The illegal decimation of Bears Ears National Monument opens up ancestral lands of the Navajo, Hopi, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute and Zuni to development that will likely degrade critical wildlife habitat, fragment migration corridors, and potentially expose southern Utah communities to unacceptable pollution and health risks. Now the management plan for the meager remnants of the original monument simply pours salt in the open wounds of the tens of thousands of tribal leaders and citizens who fought for decades to conserve these sacred lands.”
Theresa Pierno, President and CEO for National Parks Conservation Association:
“This management plan is an insult to the public, who overwhelmingly spoke out in favor of protecting Bears Ears— and all our national monuments. Today’s plan opens the monument to damaging uses that carelessly put troves of scientific resources, sacred spaces, and adjacent national park landscapes in jeopardy. Our parks don’t exist in isolation, and the administration’s plan ignores the long-recognized threats to parks from harmful activities outside their borders, putting at risk their air and water quality, dark night skies and expansive viewsheds, as well as the multi-million-dollar economy they support. The only management plan acceptable is one that encompasses Bears Ears’ entire landscape and protects the values and resources for which the monument was originally and legally created.”
Katherine Malone-France, Chief Preservation Officer, National Trust for Historic Preservation:
“This monument management plan is fundamentally flawed and premature. The National Trust and other plaintiffs are actively challenging President Trump’s unprecedented rollback of the monument’s land area by 85 percent. The plan should not be finalized before the litigation is complete. Given that the plan only considers the management needs of the much smaller—and currently contested—footprint, it is not a credible document. The plan also falls far short of providing a framework for proper stewardship of a landscape that holds deep significance for multiple tribes. It completely lacks appropriate measures to ensure protection of the significant cultural and historic resources that prompted the national monument designation in the first place and appears to leave the resources with even less protection than they had before the monument was designated. We will continue to push for the restoration of the Bears Ears National Monument to its original boundaries, and for a comprehensive management plan that truly protects the resources on the land that tell the stories of more than 12,000 years of human history.”
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by mfa-admin | Aug 29, 2017 | Uncategorized
This Spring, my partner and I – along with tens of thousands of Americans – were stunned to watch President Donald Trump sign an Executive Order that could jeopardize one of America’s greatest assets: our national monuments. From Bears Ears to the Statue of Liberty, our national monuments preserve our natural and cultural treasures.
So we decided to take a leap and help defend our national monuments! Over the course of the next few months, we will be visiting threatened national monuments throughout the West.
We want you to come along for the ride. We hope to meet many of the people who worked together to conserve our national heritage along the way. And we hope that you join us in defending our national monuments by making your voices heard here.
A Monumental Road Trip: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument!
“America’s Public Lands Embody Our Common Ground: Heritage, Freedom and Hope for the Future.”
Designated in 1996, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah is a serious powerhouse of amazing vistas, cool landscapes, adventure, science and history. Its designation established it as a monument for scientific research, and the monument continues to wow visitors, provide grand solitude and be a place of novel scientific discovery.
There are over 20,000 archaeological sites in the area. In addition, there are dinosaurs! Twenty-one new dinosaurs have been discovered since 2000. (Sorry, no dinosaur pictures …)
Grand Staircase-Escalante is also home to the Escalante River, one of the last free-flowing rivers in the West. The river felt like the life blood of the monument and has created fantastic washes, canyons and slot canyons that are a joy to explore. While we were there, we traveled to the famous Hole in the Wall Road (it travels from just north of Escalante to Lake Powell) and hiked to Golden Cathedral. It’s a stunning sandstone dome at the end of a narrow canyon with a waterfall that pours through a hole in the ceiling. The hike takes you across high plateau, traverses down a wide canyon to the Escalante river, and then up narrow Neon Canyon. Sitting there looking up at the dome, you can feel the history of the place.
Since President Clinton established the monument in 1996, there has been a continual grumble that the monument has hampered economic growth in the county by closing the area to oil, gas and mineral development. Not surprisingly, the current motivation behind the push to remove or shrink the monument is pressure from the fossil fuel industry.
The reality on the ground was much different. We found that the communities around Grand-Staircase Escalante to be excellent examples of the economic benefit designation of a monument can provide to local communities. Both Boulder and Escalante, Utah, seemed invigorated by the monument. Local businesses have sprouted up clearly as a result of tourist traffic through the area. The Magnolia Street Food bus was parked outside of the visitor’s center and served up killer tacos using local and seasonal ingredients. In addition, one of the best restaurants in America is in Boulder, Utah – Hell’s Backbone Grill & Farm. Blake Spalding, co-owner of Hell’s Backbone, spoke at the This Land is Our Land March in Salt Lake City, UT and extolled the benefits that the monument has brought to the community. We found a similar story in Escalante with cute restaurants, a great natural foods market and tour guide companies. Both communities felt alive and thriving. Nate Waggoner from Escalante Outfitters was recently interviewed on Go West, Young Podcast. He provides a solid local perspective for the economic growth the monument has provided for the local communities. Later, we visited Kanab and saw numerous businesses geared toward the monument there as well.
As the BLM has emphasized about the monument’s archaeological sites, “it is the wholeness of the sites” that makes the monument so valuable. In Red, Passion and Patience in the Desert, Terry Tempest Williams also extolled the monument for its importance as an ecological bridge between National Parks, a bridge between ecological islands. Williams poignantly describes Grand Staircase-Escalante as the “crucial missing puzzle piece that prevents ecological fragmentation.”
Crucially, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument rejoins Bryce National Park to Dixie National Forest and the Box-Death Hollow Wilderness Area, which then weaves Capitol Reef National Park into Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
I don’t know if it was the river, the spirit of the surrounding communities, the canyons or the red desert, but Grand Staircase-Escalante stole our hearts, and it’s a place to which we will return.
As we travel onto our next national monument, I urge you to please help preserve this incredible national monument. Visit here to take action!
by mfa-admin | Aug 28, 2017 | Uncategorized
This Spring, my partner and I – along with tens of thousands of Americans – were stunned to watch President Donald Trump sign an Executive Order that could jeopardize one of America’s greatest assets: our national monuments. From Bears Ears to the Statue of Liberty, our national monuments preserve our natural and cultural treasures.
So we decided to take a leap and help defend our national monuments! Over the course of the next few months, we will be visiting threatened national monuments throughout the West.
We want you to come along for the ride. We hope to meet many of the people who worked together to conserve our national heritage along the way. And we hope that you join us in defending our national monuments by making your voices heard here.
A Monumental Road Trip: Vermilion Cliffs National Monument!
Protected in 2000, the monument houses a geologic wonderland of erosional formations—sheer cliffs, slot canyons, vibrantly colored yellow-red-orange-purple sandstone dunes, rock outcroppings, and mesas. It’s a remote and seemingly unspoiled area, and home to many sensitive species of plants and animals. The monument is also home to over twenty species of raptors and after being reintroduced in 1996 by the Peregrine Fund, California Condors!
Perhaps the most famous feature of Vermilion Cliffs is “The Wave”. The area is so popular that the BLM hands out permits for just 20 individuals to visit each day. There are 10 permits handed out in an online lottery and 10 permits handed out in-person the day before at the BLM field office in Kanab. We decided to try our luck and showed up bright and early at the put our name in for a permit. The day we showed up, there were 96 other people vying for “Wave” permits. It was a fully international crowd and despite the tension, was quite festive. They literally pick numbers like a lottery or bingo. Somehow our number was picked and we scored a permit to visit “The Wave” the next day! Even if we hadn’t though, we would have had no shortage of jaw-dropping wildness to experience; as the BLM ranger said, “you have already won the lottery just by being there.”
We woke up before sunrise to start our hike, both to beat the heat and to experience the morning colors and rhythms of the desert. When we got to the trail-head, Yoko, a Japanese woman from Tokyo was already there. We invited her to join us and we headed off across the desert in the barely-there morning light.
“The Wave” is incredible. Lines of color etched into rock, swirling and pulsating, creating a rhythm of color and texture. We spent over an hour clambering around on the rock, looking at the phenomenon from every perspective.
With the Wave securely etched in our consciousness, we decided to explore further and hiked to “The Second Wave” and then to the “Swirls.” From the Swirls, we followed a canyon back to the entry point for “The Wave.” The canyon was extremely narrow in spots, and Sam kindly gave rides to Yoko and me through puddles. We headed back to “The Wave” for one final viewing. More people had arrived in the interim and it was their turn to sit in awe of sandscape.
While we were hiking “The Wave” we meet people from Japan, Canada, France, Puerto Rico (that group had been trying for three years to get a permit!), Denmark and New Hampshire, and this doesn’t account for the other 88 people that showed up for the daily permit lottery; most of whom seemed to be from overseas. That’s a jaw-dropping number of international people in a remote section of Utah and Arizona, and they are there because of our amazing, unique and irreplaceable public lands.
Vermilion Cliffs’ fate remains up in the air as pro-mining groups continue to pressure the administration to reduce or remove protections to open up mineral development. This short-term gain for a few would be at the expense of the long-term gain (beauty, wildness, solitude, ecology, history) for us all.
As we travel onto our next national monument, I urge you to please help preserve this incredible national monument. Visit here to take action!
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