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January 30th, 2018The Bureau of Land Management in Utah is ramping up a failed policy called chaining—in which bulldozers drag anchor chains to uproot and destroy native pinyon and juniper forests and sagebrush.
Why do they do this? To create more forage for cattle on public lands.
And now, under the Trump administration, the BLM wants to chain in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
The practice of chaining is so unbelievable that most people can’t imagine how destructive it is. That’s why SUWA has launched a new statewide television campaign in Utah—to focus attention on the BLM’s destructive practice and stop the agency from wrecking Grand Staircase-Escalante.
Click below to watch SUWA’s new television ad and take action:
Chaining is a scientifically-unsound practice that wastes millions of taxpayer dollars to effectively destroy thousands of acres of Utah’s public land.
While the BLM is constantly churning out new reasons as to why chaining and other vegetation removal projects need to happen, the real drivers appear to be the same as they were in the 1960s: improving grazing forage for cattle and bringing money to the BLM field offices.
And now, the BLM is proposing chaining as one of the primary methods to remove vegetation on over 13,000 acres in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
But chaining is completely incompatible with protecting the fragile ecological, paleontological, and archaeological resources in Grand Staircase. To say that chaining in Grand Staircase is wildly inappropriate would be an understatement. This is a bad proposal based on bad science that will only produce a bad outcome.
Click here to learn more—and tell the BLM to stop chaining our public lands.Thank you for taking action.
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January 4th, 2018As you know, one month ago President Trump issued an unlawful order to repeal the Bears Ears National Monument and replace it with two smaller monuments—leaving nearly 80% of the original monument unprotected.
That same day, Representative John Curtis (UT-03) introduced H.R. 4532, the “Shash Jaa National Monument and Indian Creek National Monument Act” in the U.S. House of Representatives. This terrible bill would ratify Trump’s illegal repeal of the Bears Ears—and make his unlawful order permanent.
Please contact your members of Congress and tell them to oppose this bill!
White Canyon, one of the areas left unprotected by Trump’s repeal of Bears Ears National Monument. Copyright Jeff Clay
Rep. Curtis’s bill seeks to create a management scheme for the monument that would be dictated by parochial local interests—effectively taking all power away from the Bears Ears Commission of Tribes.
Help us stop this bill by taking action now!
This horrendous legislation is being given a hearing on Tuesday, January 9th, and may move quickly through committee and onto the House floor. If it passes both chambers and becomes law, it will be even worse for Bears Ears than Trump’s executive order last month.
Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. Contact your representative and senators today! -
January 3rd, 2018Federal Public Lands Targeted for Oil and Gas Development near Bears Ears, Hovenweep and Canyons of the Ancients National Monuments, and Culturally Significant Areas in Southeast Utah
For Immediate Release
January 3, 2018Contact:
Stephen Bloch, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 801.428.3981
Landon Newell, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 801.428.3991Salt Lake City (Jan. 3): Yesterday, a coalition of conservation groups led by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) formally protested the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) decision to auction off more than 51,400 acres of remarkable Federal public lands in southeast Utah for oil and gas leasing and development. Included in BLM’s lease sale, scheduled for March 20, 2018, are public lands near Bears Ears, Hovenweep and Canyons of the Ancients National Monuments, as well as in the culturally rich Alkali Ridge Area of Critical Environmental Concern and along the Green and San Juan rivers.
“BLM’s short-sighted decision threatens Utah’s red rock wilderness as well as significant cultural and archaeological resources,” said Landon Newell, staff attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “BLM’s ‘lease everything, lease everywhere’ approach to oil and gas development needlessly threatens iconic red rock landscapes and irreplaceable cultural history in the ill-conceived push for ‘energy dominance.”
“We won’t sit idly by while President Trump and Interior Secretary Zinke auction off America’s cultural and public lands heritage to the oil and gas industry,” said Stephen Bloch, legal director with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “This lease sale flies in the face of historic preservation and environmental laws that Congress put in place to make sure that BLM thinks before it acts; not ‘lease first, and think later.’”
In addition to offering leases near Bears Ears, Hovenweep and Canyons of the Ancients National Monuments, BLM plans to auction off culturally and ecologically significant public lands throughout southeastern Utah including:
- Several tracts in a culturally rich part of southeastern Utah known as Alkali Ridge. In 2015 BLM briefly considered leasing in this area before acknowledging that it did not have enough basic information about the cultural resources in the area and backed away from that proposal. BLM still lacks this information but nevertheless is now willing to put these cultural sites at risk;
- Several tracts along segments of the Green River and San Juan River popular with families, recreational business, and tourists for river running, as well as home to several endangered fish species; and
- Several tracts near Moab, Utah, including in the Goldbar Canyon and Labyrinth Canyon proposed wilderness areas.
“It is shameful that the Trump administration is attempting to sell off our cherished wild places for the benefit of the oil and gas industry,” said Lena Moffitt, Senior Director of the Sierra Club’s Our Wild America Campaign. “We will continue to pursue all legal options to protect America’s public lands from the greed and recklessness of this administration.”
“Through lease sales like this one, Interior Secretary Zinke is handing the reins of our public lands to his pals in the oil and gas industry, despite their proximity to iconic national parks, monuments, and archeologically-rich canyons,” said Marc Thomas, with the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club. “This unfortunate giveaway is taking place even though the industry has already stockpiled more than 1.7 million acres of leased, but unused, BLM-managed lands in Utah. This is not the sort of stewardship Americans, including those of us living in southeast Utah, want for our special places.”
The following groups protested the Canyon Country District’s environmental assessment for the March 2018 lease sale: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Colorado (protested two lease parcels near Colorado border), Green River Action Network, Living Rivers, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and The Wilderness Society (protest available here). BLM’s environmental assessment is available here.
The following groups protested the Canyon Country District’s Determination of NEPA Adequacy for the March 2018 lease sale: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Green River Action Network, Living Rivers, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club (protest available here). BLM’s Determination of NEPA Adequacy is available here.
At the end of BLM’s 2016 fiscal year, there were approximately 2.9 million acres of federal public land in Utah leased for oil and gas development (here—follow hyperlink for Table 2 Acreage in Effect). At the same time, oil and gas companies had less than 1.2 million acres of those leased lands in production—less than forty percent of the total land under lease (here – follow hyperlink for Table 6 Acreage of Producing Leases). This disparity makes clear that there is no need to sacrifice any of these remarkable areas for oil and gas leasing and development.
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December 21st, 2017Read More »Our e-newsletter with the latest on redrock wilderness news and events.
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December 7th, 2017FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 7, 2017Contact: Jen Ujifusa, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, (202) 266-0473
This week, following the outrageous and illegal repeal of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments by President Trump, Utah’s representatives in Congress doubled down on the effort to unprotect these iconic landscapes by introducing two bills that would essentially ratify Trump’s actions.
On Wednesday, Rep. Chris Stewart introduced H.R. 4558, a bill that creates three new national monuments—Escalante Canyons, Kaiparowits, and Grand Staircase, respectively. These monuments match the 48 percent reduction of the original Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument perpetrated this week by Trump’s Executive Order, but the language nullifies Trump’s proclamation in favor of that of the bill. The bill also creates the so-called “Escalante Canyons National Park and Preserve,” but puts management planning for that park and the three national monuments in the hands of local officials in Kane and Garfield County despite the fact that these are federal lands belonging to all Americans.
All of the new designations prioritize recreation, hunting and grazing over conservation, and the bill reopens the lands not included in the Trump monuments to mineral leasing. The bill also includes a public lands giveaway, handing the Hole in the Rock Road to the State of Utah, and will likely reopen destructive off-road vehicle routes that have been closed for decades to protect sensitive resources.
“This bill is a brazen handout to the extremist voices who wish to eliminate federal control of public lands that belong to all,” said Scott Groene, Executive Director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “Though it purports to protect these landscapes, by handing control almost exclusively to development interests in Kane and Garfield County, it is clear the remnants of Grand Staircase-Escalante would become playgrounds for destructive recreation, poor lands management and dirty energy. The bill, with its throw away National Park designation, is a bait and switch. No one should bite.”
The other bill, H.R. 4532, introduced Tuesday by new delegation member Rep. John Curtis, alongside Reps. Bishop, Stewart and Love from the Utah delegation, ratifies the new boundaries that Trump’s proclamation put forth for Bears Ears National Monument, replacing the Bears Ears with two significantly diminished landscapes: the 142,337-acre Shash Jáa National Monument, and the 86, 447-acre Indian Creek National Monument. These new boundaries are an 83 percent reduction in the original Bears Ears National Monument.
Like the Escalante bill, Rep. Curtis’ bill creates a new management council comprised of the same local elected officials that sought the undoing of the monument, as well as members of Tribes who are picked not by Tribal governments, but by the Utah delegation. Furthermore, the bill excludes three of the five tribes who advocated for protection of Bears Ears from the council. This framework ensures that the protective status of the original Bears Ears National Monument will not be honored in these newer, decimated parcels.
“The fact that these bills even exist is evidence that the Utah delegation knows Trump’s actions were illegal, and they are scrambling to set up a Plan B,” Groene said. “But the two million acres of lands that Trump stripped from the original Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments still belong to all Americans, and we will work with our allies in Congress, who are more motivated than ever, to ensure that neither of these efforts to hand over these national treasures ever see the light of day.”
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White Canyon in Bears Ears National Monument. Copyright Jeff Clay