Protecting public lands and wild outdoor spaces has been a hot topic in the outdoor industry and the U.S. government all year long, and while Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante have received the bulk of the attention, there are other places that need preservation too. In this clip, we travel to Oregon to visit Owyhee, a spectacular outdoor playground that is nearly the size of Yellowstone, and yet 95% of it remains unprotected and at risk to commercial development, including mining. This short documentary will introduce you to this extraordinary place and show you why it should be protected.
Showing posts with label National Monuments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Monuments. Show all posts
Patagonia Sues Trump Administration Over Bears Ears Reduction
The day after the announcement was made to reduce the size of the monuments the lawsuits started to be filed. At least three came on Tuesday alone, with others following throughout the week. By Wednesday, Patagonia had replaced its usual website homepage with a warning message saying "The President Stole Your Lands," which remains in place as of this writing. The company has also created a second page with information about this topic, including maps showing the new monuments before and after the reduction. There are also links that allow concerned visitors to express their concerns by sharing the info on social media, although those efforts have done nothing to convince Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to change course. In fact, he may be preparing to announce reductions to to other monuments as well.
Patagonia has been at the forefront of the movement to protect Bears Ears for years, and applauded the efforts of the Obama administration to protect the area last year. The company was also one of the first to step up to fight the President's move to review national monuments when it was announced earlier this year. Patagonia was also instrumental in getting the industries Outdoor Retailer trade show to relocate from Salt Lake City to Denver in large part because of Utah's actions against public lands.
The outdoor apparel manufacturer wasn't alone in filing lawsuits this week. A number of conversation groups, including The Wilderness Society, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and seven other groups are all part of one lawsuits, while at least five Native American tribes are taking part in others. These lawsuits are expected to take years to sort out, with the potential to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court as judges decide where the limits of executive powers lie. That will be a matter of debate for some time, with some arguing the President doesn't have the authority to make this move, while others say it is well within his jurisdiction.
For now, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will remain unchanged while this issue gets sorted. What they will look like when it is all said and done will be very interesting.
Video: Meet the Canyon Runner
With this video, we travel to the Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona where we meet Shaun Martin, an athletic director at a local school. He also happens to be an endurance athlete who organized an ultramarathon in the Canyon, which is a spectacular location to for outdoor athletes to push themselves to the limit. It also happens to be the only way for visitors to explore the national monument on their own without a Navajo guide.
Trump Will Cut Size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments
Trump is headed to Utah today where he will announce that he is cutting the size of the Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and Grand Staircase-Escalante in half. Both monuments sit on land that is ripe for development with a number of commercial interests ready to move into those areas. Trump supporters say that this would allow much-needed economic development for those parts of the U.S.
Today's announcement is likely to trigger legal action by local Native American tribes and environmentalists. There has been an outpouring of support from a number of different groups calling for the U.S. government to leave these monuments alone. Those pleas have been largely ignored as the Trump Administration moved ahead with undoing much of the work done by President Obama over the previous eight years. Obama designated the Bears Ears as a national monument using an executive order as the end of his term grew near, which was also controversial at the time.
At the moment, just Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante seem to be on the chopping block, but Secretary Zinke reviewed as many 27 monuments as per the President's orders. Those monuments stretch as far back as the Clinton Administration, with more potential cuts to their size coming. For now, we'll just have to wait to see if some of those other areas will get reduced in size too.
The controversy behind Bears Ears and other monuments isn't an easy one to sort out. While nationwide there is plenty of support for keeping these areas untouched, within the state of Utah plenty of people are in favor of doing away with the national monuments and having the state manage those lands instead. The feeling is that they can do a better job locally than the federal government has done thus far. Of course, there are also plenty of locals who favor commercialization and development of these areas too.
President Trump will be in Utah later today to officially make the announcement on the changes that he recommends. Those changes will have to first clear congress before they become official, but it seems as if there will be little opposition in the Republican controlled House and Senate. The legal battles are just about to start however.