A renowned wilderness guide with decades of experience exploring the Bears Ears region, Hadenfeldt has long argued that this austere landscape teeming with archaeological and cultural treasures in Southeast Utah should be considered. like an open-air museum. And every time he visits, more of that treasure has been looted.
“Come on, folks,” he muttered in disgust, as he scanned the sandy soil this week for pieces of the painted pottery of the ancestral Puebloan Indians that were so easy to find in this area.
“This whole site was covered in beautiful shards of pot,” he said. “I guess we’re never going to stop people from pocketing this stuff.”
In the three years since President Donald Trump reduced the size of Bears Ears National Monument by 85%, undoing protections established by President Barack Obama, pressures on this area have only intensified, according to residents and scientists. WHO study it. Threats come in many forms – from roaring ATVs to uranium mines to tired coronavirus tourists seeking outdoor adventures – on land considered sacred by several Native American tribes.
On her first trip as the new Home Secretary, Deb Haaland arrived in this small town perched under cliffs and spiers on Wednesday for three days of meeting and hiking in the area. The first Native American Cabinet Secretary in U.S. history is examining what to do with the Bears Ears National Monument and the nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that Trump has also downsized. After his visit, Haaland is expected to recommend President Biden to restore the Bears Ears boundaries to at least 1.35 million acres established by Obama towards the end of his term in 2016.
Biden’s allies see Bears Ears as a first opportunity to prioritize conservation over fossil fuel extraction on public lands while addressing an issue of particular importance to Native Americans, who want to see the monument not only restored but extended beyond Obama’s borders.
Without protection, the remains of thousands of Native American settlements and cultural sites are “critically endangered,” said Pat Gonzales-Rodgers, executive director of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which is made up of five tribes closely linked to the region. .
“Ultimately, these are the shrines and cathedrals of worship and cultural practice for these tribes,” he said.
But Bears Ears remains a divisive issue in Utah. Republican politicians don’t want Biden to use an executive order to restore the monument. Instead, lawmakers say they can build a more lasting solution through federal legislation that would allow negotiations between ranchers, miners, Native Americans and conservationists to balance competing interests.
“If President Biden deploys this, the likelihood of it being overturned by a future president or taken over by the Supreme Court is just extremely high,” said Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), whose district includes Bears Ears. . “And that’s a terrible way to solve these problems. Nobody wins. “
Curtis, who planned to meet Haaland during his visit, asked him to delay the monument’s decision “just long enough to see if we can come to that consensus.”
“How the hell does someone in Washington, DC know where you should be able to hunt and fish, where you should be able to gather wood, where grazing is appropriate?” he added. “Let us leave these decisions to the inhabitants.”
Controversy draws crowds
Because Bears Ears was challenged by Trump so soon after its inception, much of the infrastructure that can be found in other protected areas – signs, buildings, management staff – does not exist here. . But the crowds came anyway – fueled by social media and the national spotlight on the region.
“The tours really exploded,” said Josh Ewing, executive director of Friends of Cedar Mesa, a nonprofit that seeks to protect the area. “You have all these visits without resources.”
It is estimated that more than 420,000 people visited Bears Ears last year, despite the pandemic, and Ewing expects well over half a million visitors this year. Volunteers saw visitors leave trash, loot fossils and remains from Native American settlements, and scribble graffiti on ancient rock art. RVs and RVs can be spotted parked on the edge of the canyons and traversing the area, following GPS coordinates posted on the internet that identify archaeological sites.
“Google really manages the monument,” said Tim Peterson of the Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental group.
“He was completely overwhelmed,” Peterson said. “It’s a classic example of how things can get completely out of hand.”
The Bureau of Land Management, which oversees what remains of the Bears Ears National Monument and other public lands, has only two law enforcement officers in its Monticello field office who are responsible for nearly 2 million ‘acres, according to Friends of Cedar Mesa.
Faced with a shortage of government resources, Friends of Cedar Mesa volunteers opened a Bears Ears Visitor Center in 2018 to try and orient tourists. The group even resorted to installing portable toilets in an area particularly popular with hikers.
“We are paying to have these pumped up and maintained with nonprofit funds just to address the human waste issues that arise in this area,” Ewing said.
Native American tribes and environmentalists sued Trump over his decision to shrink the monument, arguing that national monuments are permanent and that Trump did not have the power to revoke Obama’s decision. This case is now on hold pending review by the Biden administration.
The five tribes that came together in a historic coalition to fight for the monument over ten years ago – the Navajo Nation, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Hopi Tribe, the Ute Indian Tribe and the Zuni Pueblo – call the The Biden administration to create a 1.9 million acre Monument, as they originally requested from Obama, said Matt Campbell, an attorney representing three of the tribes in the lawsuit against Trump.
“If we saw something that was identical to President Obama’s plan, the tribes would be grateful, but there would be some disappointment,” he said.
“Large paperwork blanket”
Less than a year after Trump cut 1.1 million acres from the Bears Ears monument, Kyle Kimmerle, a residential contractor from Moab, filed a claim with the Bureau of Land Management to dig for minerals on land that lies found in the protected area established by Obama.
Uranium mining is both part of his family history – dating back to his great-grandfather – and a hobby for Kimmerle. He called his mine Easy Peasy.
“Some people go fishing on Saturday, I’m going to tinker with my mining claims,” he said.
Trump had been pressured by a Canadian mining company before downsizing Bears Ears, and critics continued to fear that mining or oil and gas companies would rush to the region once protections were removed .
So far, none of this has happened. There have been six mining claims filed since 2018, according to the Bureau of Land Management. Environmentalists who follow the area say the Easy Peasy mine is the only one that has been actively excavated.
Kimmerle dug up 30 tonnes of ore, sampled it for vanadium and identified uranium – a feasibility study, he called it. At the moment, with uranium prices about half of what it would take to break even, he said, mining here is not feasible.
“Nothing is going well for the moment; the price is just too low, ”he said.
Environmentalists point out that prices could always change and that without protections, the earth remains in danger.
Kimmerle said that a restored Bears Ears monument would make Easy Peasy difficult, if not impossible.
“There is layer after layer after layer of red tape and regulation in this country,” he said. “And this monument will be another big blanket of paperwork.”
Scientific work remains buried
Trump’s decision to cut the monument has already cost Robert Gay work.
The paleontologist who studies crocodile ancestor fossils around Bears Ears saw federal research dollars dry up after Trump downsized the monument.
He had planned to be at Bears Ears this week, digging up what he called a “truly amazing site” full of phytosaur fossils – a predatory crocodile mimicking a vent above the eyes – which all appeared to be dying. simultaneously in a mass event.
After discovering the site in 2016, Gay received a grant of $ 25,000 from the National Program to Support Scientific Studies on Conservation Lands, a sum of money set aside by Congress for scientific work on National Conservation Lands, including national monuments. He had started excavating, but once his site fell outside the boundaries of the national monument, he said, he could no longer access funding.
It is “probably one of the most interesting fossil sites from this period in Utah,” said Gay, who is director of land programs at the Colorado Canyons Association. “Because there is no money, it will not be searched again this year.”
In his fieldwork, Gay has found ATV and motorcycle trails crossing the fossil sites he is working on.
Not great for the open air museum which is Bears Ears.
“I now compare that to opening the museum and taking out all the docents and security guards. Or just don’t hire them there in the first place, ”he said. “It’s a bit like a free-for-all.”