Letter to Senator Orrin Hatch

Sent to Senator Orrin Hatch August 16, 2016

Even though we know you visited San Juan County earlier this summer, we haven't heard much from you since, and Rural Utah really needs your support and negotiating skills. In 2014 the Environmental funding lobby, Conservation Lands Foundation, set their target on Cedar Mesa, in San Juan County along with sites in a dozen other states as the “current campaign” for more National Monuments.  If protection truly is their goal, then that is the area where Anasazi ruins abound, and they probably do need greater protection, though we’re not sure that more tourists are the wisest way to do that!

 Now in 2016, we are engaged in a great land battle, trying to escape the greedy grasp of the CLF, who has now expanding their campaign to include a total of 1.9 Million acres.  This involves Forest Service lands of Bears Ears and the Abajo Mountains. Very few sites exist in this area, but it is where Native People and Anglos alike depend on its grass, timber, and water. Hunting, Boy Scout camps, and 101 recreational activities are centered in this area, along with Dine and Ute traditional activities. To abscond with this land, is government overreach. 

Both Cedar Mesa and the Blue Mountain area already have BLM policies, and Forest Service controls established, but both have been underfunded.  If these lands needed protection, why wasn't federal money provided so both agencies could do their job?  Making another National Monument is not going to fix a $18 Trillion dollar debt, nor help improve protection, or economic livelihood of the area.  We feel you are in a position to do something significant to stop this impending disaster.  Utah cannot afford another donation to Obama's National Monument showcase. Why aren't our congressmen fighting for us?  

A group of 2000 local people have been working for 6 weeks, in every way we know how, to alert others, argue our case, bend the ear of our congressmen, and Secretary Jewell.  We have signed petitions, written letters, gone to the State Capitol, built floats, stuffed newspapers with flyers, and argued our cause in every way we know.  None of us are directed by a well-paid CEO, nor reimbursed for our expenses.  We have done it because we love this land, that we today call home.  We say to the Hopi, and Navajo who want to come back to their old Utah homelands, “Come, Enjoy, Visit, Celebrate, and leave it as pristine as you find it.  But don’t take our freedoms and our land away from those who have lived here the past 200 years.”   We hope you will do more than appease listen, and look.  We need a warrior to lead this battle.