BY TRUST STAFF
Let the Pronghorn Roam
Wildlife needs connected habitats, and obstacles like roads and fences can sever an animal’s access to resources. This spring, we worked with wildlife managers and volunteers to make another 1.25 miles of livestock fence on North Rim Ranches passable for pronghorn. Because these animals cannot jump fences like mule deer do, we raised the bottom barbed wire and replaced it with a smooth strand to allow pronghorn safe passage underneath. Though the livestock are not affected by the fence update, our wildlife cameras show that the pronghorn have definitely taken note. To date, Grand Canyon Trust volunteers have helped make 15 miles of livestock fence on North Rim Ranches friendly for pronghorn crossing. And we are not alone in our efforts. Neighboring ranchers have also made changes to the bottom wires of their fences in support of pronghorn movement—a true team effort for healthier, more resilient wildlife habitat.
Cerissa Hoglander
Land Conservation Program Manager
Testifying on Capitol Hill
Last year, the administration listed uranium as a “critical mineral.” This year, to enhance access to critical minerals, the administration recommended streamlining environmental protections and reviewing existing mining bans and land designations such as national parks, national monuments, and wildlife refuges. Recently, the president declined to impose trade measures that would have artificially increased demand for domestically mined uranium, and which could have incentivized mines near the Grand Canyon and Bears Ears National Monument. However, he simultaneously created a working group to examine other options to help mining operations. In June, I testified before two legislative hearings in Washington: one on a bill that would remove uranium from the critical minerals list and the other on the Grand Canyon Centennial Protection Act, which would permanently ban new uranium mining on 1 million acres surrounding the Grand Canyon. If passed, both bills will serve as a strong line of defense against attacks on our public lands.
Pinyon and Juniper Tours
Not all pinyon and juniper removal projects are awful. Which means that when the Fishlake National Forest proposes to remove 90 percent of pinyon and juniper on up to 340,000 acres throughout the entire national forest via chaining (dragging anchor chains between two tractors), bullhogging (using large machinery to reduce mature pinyon and juniper trees to large piles of woodchips), fire, and/or chainsaws, we go visit as many of those proposed sites as possible. With the help of volunteers and staff, we’ve provided dozens of site reports with our recommendations to the Fishlake National Forest. We are joining a two-day pinyon and juniper tour that we suggested the forest organize for interested parties, including the state, county governments, scientists, and citizens, and we are learning everything we can about both pinyon and juniper. It’s what the pinyon and juniper can expect from the Grand Canyon Trust: we’re working to have their backs.
In late April, Grand Canyon National Park invited several members of the Grand Canyon Intertribal Centennial Conversations group to teach at its training program for interpretive rangers. As part of the park’s centennial celebration, the intertribal group is committed to its mission of “commemorating our indigenous presence and sharing our true history while we begin to heal, build, and strengthen relationships with all people to protect Grand Canyon’s heritage.” During a break in the training program, Coleen Kaska, Jack Pongyesva, Octavius Seowtewa, and Sarana Riggs visited a medallion with the names of Grand Canyon-affiliated tribes etched into cement along a popular walkway leading to Mather Point on the park’s south rim. Putting faces to the tribal names, each member stood on his or her respective affiliations, in this case the Havasupai, Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, and Apache communities. The Trust’s Grand Canyon Program manager, Sarana Riggs, put one foot in each of her connected heritages.
Roger Clark
Grand Canyon Program Director
A Kane Ranch Sunrise
Together with Terra Birds, a nonprofit dedicated to youth empowerment and career advancement, two of the Trust’s Rising Leaders Program staff and six students spent three days maintaining native-plant gardens, envisioning sustainable landscapes, and exploring a sense of belonging.
As I slept out on the porch of Kane Ranch, an old homestead overlooking the Vermilion Cliffs, I turned to face the coming sunrise, a mistake that offered a silver lining: a breathtaking view. By 5:30 a.m. several Ponderosa High School students were silently watching the sunbeams hit the ground and race up their tents. At lunchtime I saw the photos they had taken and watched them paint the colors they had seen. Their reflections pointed toward creating space for quiet and self-expression in their daily lives. What we’re doing out here goes beyond the fieldwork. We’re building relationships with ourselves, one another, and the landscapes of the Colorado Plateau.
Chelsea Griffin
Rising Leaders Program Coordinator
This summer, President Trump decided not to impose quotas requiring U.S. nuclear power producers to buy 25 percent of their uranium from U.S. mines. Instead, the president created the United States Nuclear Fuel Working Group to make recommendations on how to “reinvigorate the entire nuclear fuel supply chain.”
Although the uranium mining industry’s latest attempt to artificially boost its bottom line failed, the threat of toxic mining remains. There are hundreds of active mining claims within the original Bears Ears boundary. The president’s working group could still recommend measures that make mining uranium at Bears Ears feasible. Stay tuned.
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
In good news for Grand Staircase, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is investigating whether the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is violating specific instructions contained in every budget appropriation law passed since 2002. The law says that Interior cannot use any taxpayer money to conduct pre-leasing studies for coal, oil, and gas on lands contained in monuments as they existed on January 20, 2001. That’s exactly what the BLM’s revised plan for Grand Staircase is doing, and that’s why the GAO was asked to investigate.
Tim Peterson
Cultural Landscapes Program Director
Cows and Collaborations
We’re out on the ground this summer, training volunteers to document what ungrazed land looks like. It’s probably not what you’re used to seeing. Native grasses spring up between sagebrush, aquatic plants surround the water’s edge, and bees and butterflies swarm flowering plants. There aren’t many places like this.
We canvassed the Colorado Plateau, calling federal and state land agencies to determine where ungrazed areas exist. We compiled scientific reports containing data on the effects of grazing. Now, we’re tag-teaming with volunteers, including friends at the Great Old Broads for Wilderness, to train citizen scientists to fill in a map with photographs and observations of these ungrazed areas formally closed to livestock grazing. This is advocacy in action: mobilizing people to collect data that can be harnessed to improve livestock grazing management and policies into the future.
Lisa Winters
Research and Stewardship Volunteer Coordinator
Also in this issue:
How Native entrepreneurs are tapping into the Grand Canyon tourism economy. Read now ›
