Editor's Note: Portions of this article were previously published and are reprinted here with permission of the author.
More than a few years ago, in the 1970s, Utah writer Edward Abbey spoke to a journalism class at the University of Montana. His rant for pay focused on the value of destroying Glen Canyon Dam. His performance was irresponsible. There was nothing about flood control, water storage for downstream urban development or power generation. It was puredee atmospherics. It was vulgar. He was offensive. We loved it.
His curmudgeonly shtick echoed a nascent environmental movement. Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson were important. Earth Day in that college town full of what one southern Utah lawmaker might've labeled “bird and bunny lovers, tree huggers and rock lickers” was a grass-roots celebration. John McPhee had just published “Encounters with the Archdruid,” a celebration of David Brower's radical resistance to the Bureau of Reclamation’s plan to dam up the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
Abbey believed modern humans destroy everything. The only way to preserve anything was to keep Homo sapiens away — the drillers; the diggers; the cutters; the dam builders; the climbers; the part-time residents of multimillion-dollar mountainside McMansions; the Doritos-munching, Subaru-driving adventurers. Everyone.
The strident brand of environmentalism that Abbey embraced targeted both the producer (oil and gas drilling, mining and logging) and consumer (industrial tourism). It was a long time coming. Given the rhetorical fog and political impasse over Bears Ears National Monument, I’m afraid it will be a long time gone.
Whether President Donald Trump shrinks the monument to 160,000 acres, as The New York Times has reported, or leaves its current border intact, questions related to protection of artifacts of early human habitation have largely been answered. Those irreplaceable archeological sites, as many as 100,000 inside the monument, will remain unprotected for now, easy targets for vandalism.
The federal government’s Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and Interior Department do not have the resources to manage the 1.3 million-acre parcel. It’s already seeing increases in tourist visits, and that’s not likely to change.
Perhaps there’s a third way.
In June 2015, a group of ranchers, environmentalists, Native Americans, ATV riders, miners, hunters and archeology buffs — collectively known as the San Juan County Lands Council — produced a plan to protect the Bears Ears and Cedar Mesa area of southeastern Utah.
It was a locally driven process that respected the rich tapestry of rural life. 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. Essayist Nathan Nielson, who grew up ranching in the Four Corners region, wrote in High Country News: “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 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.
At one end of the political spectrum, efforts of the group of volunteers were marginalized by a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar campaign funded by environmentalists from beyond that “social scope.” Their agenda apparently was loftier than 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.
At the other end of the political spectrum, the council was sandbagged by revisions inserted into the sweeping Public Lands Initiative introduced to Congress by Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) a year ago after the council’s proposal was publicly vetted. The congressman’s initiative smelled of backroom deals and cronyism.
While the results of the Lands Council efforts didn’t please everyone (shortly after the plan was adopted, a group of Native Americans submitted its own monument proposal to President Barack Obama), it demonstrated that a bit of face-to-face civility, transparency and a spirit of compromise can overcome even seemingly intractable, deeply held racial, cultural and political beliefs.
Bill Keshlear is a resident of Salt Lake City and graduate of the University of Montana. He was a manager last year of Democratic candidate Heidi Redd’s campaign bid for state Senate District 27, which includes Bears Ears National Monument.