Sandy and Gail Johnson are just two of many local families whose livelihood will be impacted by the newly designated Bears Ears Monument. While President Obama, in his press statement, said the monument came “following years of public input,” Johnson and others say much of that input was in the form of “NO.” The president ignored pleas of ranchers and local tribes to leave the area alone." The following story comes from Free Range Report Jan. 14, 2017
Johnson's entire ranch: deeded pasture, state land, and grazing allotments are on Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service areas. The whole ranch is encompassed by the newly designated Bears Ears Monument (see map above). Sandy says he "doesn’t know what is going to happen."
He, like others in the region, "relies on federal grazing allotments for summer and winter livestock range. Johnson, a Vietnam veteran has got his Utah governor, senators, state lawmakers and county commissioners behind him.
While he supports protection of the 1.35 million acres (about the size of South Dakota’s Shannon County) in and around the Bears Ears, he worries that with the creation of a monument, careless tourists will cause destruction."
“It’s in multiple use now, and that’s how it should have stayed,” said Johnson, explaining that off-roaders, hunters and others were able to responsibly utilize the federal land prior to the designation.
“You put a monument name on it and lots of people come and then they destroy everything.”
And there are more concerns than just an overload of visitors. Without responsible grazing and management, forage becomes a fire hazard and invasive weeds take over."
“There will be places they’ve grazed forever where they won’t be able to clean up a reservoir because of restrictions on mechanized equipment or even bring in a chainsaw to fix fence.” Sandy Johnson, rancher
"Jim Keyes, a local rancher who also works as an extension beef specialist for Utah State University, said the newly designated monument borders, but does not take in, his family’s winter range.
He, too, said the action was contrary to the desires of the local residents.
“I’ve sat in on literally dozens of meetings the last two years. The Navajo tribe said ‘We don’t want this. It will restrict what we can do. We won’t be able to gather firewood.’
“We went to meetings,” said Johnson. “The local people here in San Juan County don’t want this monument. The governor was against it and all the senators here were against it.”
But a small group of Navajos joined forces with a group called the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and together, the groups worked to achieve the designation."
"Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz said compromises were being discussed, but ended up being thrown out in the lame duck president’s last minute move.
“After years of painstaking negotiations with a diverse coalition, Utah had a comprehensive bipartisan solution on the table that would have protected the Bears Ears and provided a balanced solution. Instead, the president’s midnight monument cherry picked provisions of the Public Lands Initiative and disregarded the economic development and multi-use provisions necessary for a balanced compromise.
“…the so-called tribal coalition supporting the monument over the objections of their own Utah members will quickly find they have been misled. The president’s promise of co-management between the tribes and the federal government cannot be gained through executive action. Only Congress can authorize such agreements – and the administration made little effort to help facilitate legislation that would have done so,” said Chaffetz in a news release."
