By Cassy Moon July 21, 2016
[June 2017 Cassy and Justin Moon and their family have now moved to Richfield, but this past year she was one of the warrior women leading the the Bears Ears protest. We will miss her valiant efforts and strong voice, but know she will continue to speak from afar.]
There are environmental groups vying for a national monument in our ever-so-desolate area. They are using the Native Americans as the main proponent of this proposal. When I attended a meeting a few months ago and the Utah Navajo and Utah Utes in attendance asked for their "Anglo brothers and sisters" to help stop the creation of the monument, I felt I needed to become more than a loud voice and have been helping them. I don't want a monument in our area and neither do the majority of the locals. I should mention that it is 1.9 MILLION acres! That is bigger than several states and would establish 93% of the land in the county with tougher federal regulations. The majority is already under BLM or Forest Service management.
I have several good reasons. The first reason is that tourism, which will surely come, is not a sustainable economy. We are not like the areas of Hawaii, Orlando, Puerta Villarta, and San Francisco that are temperate so visitors come year round. As I have seen in the Escalante monument, tourism dies off in the winter months, so those workers are laid off and they starve. People in that area ask for assistance from my church more in those months than any other time. The simple reality is the jobs go away, but the need for housing, fuel, food, utilities and other such bills are year round. The monument has created a welfare city for year-round dwellers.
My second reason is if we popularize this area, the visitors will surely come. Visitors who do not believe the land is sacred as we do. Visitors who are not aware of cultural traditions and would roam through the ruins and perhaps take an ancient brick or scratch "Mary loves Johnny" on a rock. These visitors have been proven to be more of a detriment to national parks and monuments than locals. In fact, parks like Yosemite and Bryce Canyon are limiting cars in the area because of the congestion. Places like The Wave in Kane County allow only a few people a day into the park.
As I have researched this topic, I have found in many environmental circles that people are calling for even more limits to already existing monuments. They are stating the facts of too much traffic, too many people going off of pathways and trails, too many people being insensitive to the landscape, traditions and cultures of the area, and even have gone so far to claim scenic flights have disturbed the birds. While I believe that these events are true, I can't help but think that popularizing an area only destroys an area, which leads to greater limitations and will lock even the locals out of the land. All because the actions of others.
Take, for instance, the events in Yellowstone just this spring: a man went off the path and fell into the boiling pots where his disintegrated body will never be recovers, the woman who animal-napped the very newborn buffalo calf because she felt it was too cold to survive (anyone with knowledge of rural areas or animals would know the mother would not accept the animal once it was touched by human scent--it was later euthanized by park rangers instead of keeping it alive on a reserve--my grandmother raised many abandoned calves and there is no way this animal had to have that fate), the men who ran through the mineral pools only to return to Canada and post it online (which led to no prosecution whatsoever) and the man who was caught in the mineral falls who was collecting water for medicinal purposes. Unlike Yellowstone, our area doesn't receive the transient population. We really don't want that abuse in our area.
We already know of limits that have been set for the Navajo tribe in Canyon de Chelly. Navajo and Anglo alike are no longer allowed in the canyon without a guide, and even then the groups are limited. Keep in mind that the Navajo were originally promised rights to continue cultural practices in the canyon. The Navajo even appealed the Canyon designation many years ago, but were told no. The Havasupai and Walapai tribes of the Grand Canyon were told similar promises and they have been literally locked out of their cultural land. One of my Navajo friends pointed me toward a quote by Red Cloud from many years ago. He stated, "They made us many promises. Many of these promises I cannot remember. They only kept one. They promised to take our land. And they did."
Thirdly, our area has many occupations that revolve around the land. From ranchers (cows are truly the best reseeders of nature), to a few mines (who are responsible in their practices), to oil and uranium industry. I would like all of you readers to know that nothing is done without government regulation in this land as it is. What is being asked for is that no economy happen as all need for regulation will be superseded by the monument. With that said, our school district will definitely struggle. Our tax valuation that provides our budget is based on roughly 20 companies. All but two are tied to the land. Even Verizon, which is a leading cellphone provider, is tied to the land. Where does the supply to make your technology come from? With that said, if we don't have a stable economy that can provide jobs for families, our school budget will be greatly reduced, affecting over 3,000 children in the poorest county of the state. Our children deserve every right to receive the supplies and quality of education of children in urban areas. A lower stable tax base revolving around just tourism will not do this.
Our county has been heavily involved in a Public Lands Initiative that will not make either side of the argument happy, but it is a compromise. It seems that while many locals are willing to meet at the table and provide concessions in a better management and protection process that the environmentalists are not. They are willing to use any means necessary, even to the abuse of non-local people to promote their wants in our land. A poignant example is when my Navajo friend asked a Ute woman from near Ute Mountain in Colorado to instead support a monument for Ute Mountian instead of his sacred Bears Ears, she was immediately angry and couldn't believe he would even suggest it. All I am asking you to do is click the link attached and help us fight the same way that the non-locals are. Please sign the petition. We need 100,000 signatures and we need them NOW! https://petitions.whitehouse.
P.S. Everything in the land is already federally managed. Nothing can be done without federal approval as it is already the majority of public land. There really isn't a lumber business in the entire county as it has already been managed down to non-existent sales. The argument of protecting it from expansion of the population...one representative from SLC has stated that there will be strip mines, strip malls, and condos on the Bears Ears if it is not protected (and then he posted a picture of a swell in the mountains of somewhere decidedly NOT Bears Ears. There was so much timber in those hills that I believe it was perhaps Oregon.
There was the mining of uranium decades ago during the boom of national defense, but those mines are not in operation and they are not "just left abandoned". Many of the locals who know where those mines were have to point them out because they have been closed and reclaimed by the land. There is one active mine about 70 miles from Blanding, but it is not that large and the BLM had a 3 year hearing process that they just extended for another year (this process should be completed in three years per BLM regulations). As for the condos, people can't live where there isn't water. Hence the reason that there is no community on Bears Ears already.
The number one issue I have with this issue is not that it will protect the land, as I fiercely believe that wanton destruction is not good, but that people should be allowed to continue in the lifestyles they have created. Lifestyles that include wood gathering, pinion nuts and other foods, as well as medicinal herbs for the Native Americans. In my research, I have found that the call for further limiting the national monuments will happen. There is not a single national monument or park in the entire USA that can claim the promises and regulations made at the establishment of the said monument or park is the same as it was then. This is called the evolution of a monument or park.
We can be told that everything will remain as it is now, but history will repeat itself as it has the past 100 years of the parks and monuments system. We of the area are not in love with the idea of destroying the land. We like our lives as they are now, which includes availability of all to visit the land...for free. The national monuments I the area (Canyonlands, Natural Bridges, and Hovenweep) already have signs up that show they don't allow gathering. We would like to be able to at least keep the same level of economy that our county, the poorest in the state, has now. I know that several things will change if the monument happens, and these are based on fact. Housing prices will skyrocket, yet tourism jobs that will morph from stable family jobs (because our economy will change) will not allow many of those employees to purchase the homes. They will rent or leave, much like Moab. The area will be continually limited by sheer numbers of people, hence the further damage.
We are finding in other parks that visitors are the ones doing the damage, yet the locals will pay for it with the increased regulation, yet the visitors will never truly be educated in how to behave in our area. Look to Yellowstone just this spring for examples. These things are happening in Escalante as well. In the 24th largest county in the USA, San Juan County cannot withstand the limitations that will surely follow as the government will decree 93% of the land in our boundaries as already existing national monument/park and new. The massive size of the proposed area even goes so far as to include our life-giving watershed. Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell seemed taken aback when that information came out in the meeting with commissioners. It seemed she was unaware of the repercussions of this action could bring.
There are already what the BLM calls the "11 layers of protection" to protect this land. The problem is the underfunding to enforce it. One more monument will further the funding issues because now more regulation will be needed as the masses will come. With that said, keep in mind that nothing with land-based business happens in this area without BLM, NPS, or Forest Service regulation and permission...right down to Commisioner Lyman's protest ride. I have heard the audio recording of the conversation when Juan Palma gave permission. An audio recording that was withheld from evidence by Judge Shelby before it was discovered he should recuse himself from the case as he was close friends with Steven Bloch, SUWA's representative (these men were together as friends and family several times a week). Of course, I have a distrust that our government can keep the promises being made in this monument proposition. There are too many previous broken promises and too much collaboration behind closed doors unsettles me." Cassy Moon
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