When Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced plans to travel to Utah later this year, western ears perked up with concerns about a new national monument there.
Ethan Lane, executive director of the Public Lands Council, told the Washington Examiner that he thinks Jewell’s trip to Utah could end up with millions more acres of western land being named national monuments.
Among them is Bears Ears, a pair of buttes about 330 miles southeast of Salt Lake City in a wilderness area. Lane said Jewell hasn’t mentioned specific sites, but there have been discussions about a 1.9 million-acre national monument declaration that would include Bears Ears.
In addition to being a beautiful natural area, Bears Ears contains many Native American cultural relics that make it one of the largest unprotected archeological sites in the world. According to the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which favors the site being designated as a cultural site, more than 10,000 cultural and archeological sites are in the area.
Many local organizations and Native American groups have pushed for Obama to designate the land as a national monument. However, Lane says many opponents in the area want the land to be open to grazing and resource production.
“I have a great deal of concern about [Jewell’s] lack of concern for the rural communities that have to deal with this,” Lane said.
The federal government has rankled many ranchers, energy companies and lawmakers west of the Mississippi by declaring national monuments using the Antiquities Act. The law, passed in 1906, gives the president broad authority to declare national monuments, which essentially makes land off-limits to grazing or energy production.
Every president since the act passed has used it in some capacity, but many Republicans have raised concerns about the Obama administration’s use of the law to declare monuments. Since 2009, Obama has used the act to declare 19 new national monuments and enlarge two others, affecting a total of 3.66 million acres.
Jessica Kershaw, a spokeswoman with the Department of Interior, declined to comment on when Jewell would make her trip and whether Bears Ears would be named a monument. However, she denied Lane’s suggestion that Jewell wouldn’t want to hear from local residents.
Kershaw said Jewell would travel to Utah, among other places, this year to hear from local residents about a variety of issues. When Jewell travels, she wants to talk to community members about how to make the nation’s public lands work best for the entire nation, she said.
“The secretary was clear that these ideas should be heard and discussed — especially when there’s a variety of opinions — and that in some cases, the next step may simply be more conversations, and more listening,” Kershaw said.
That doesn’t bring a lot of comfort to people such as Lane.
Lane says he’s particularly concerned about ranchers who have been using the land to graze for decades. Naming Bears Ears, or other portions of the West, a national monument can hurt the economies of rural areas, he said.
“Whenever you see these monuments declared, where you have historical agricultural operations and rural community activity, making a monument designation is touted as a great tourism benefit,” he said.
“What’s concerning is we’re replacing long-standing agricultural activity … with seasonal, hourly-wage tourism activities in this area.”
