BY TRUST STAFF
TIM PETERSON
Canadian mining company backs off
Fans of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments take heart — your voices have been heard!
Faced with slumping financials and public backlash, a Canadian company has scrapped plans to mine copper and cobalt from lands President Trump removed from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Our new Congress is also hard at work advancing bills to restore both monuments and investigating what led to the largest elimination of public lands protections in American history.
By the time you read this, an oversight hearing probing the president’s monuments review and the subsequent reductions will have been held in the House Committee on Natural Resources.
Two bills have been introduced that would restore and expand Bears Ears, one of which would also restore Grand Staircase-Escalante. The bills, the BEARS Act and the ANTIQUITIES Act of 2019, deserve your support — please urge your members of Congress to co-sponsor these important pieces of legislation.
Tim Peterson
Cultural Landscapes Program Director
Bringing willows back to Rosilda Spring
Drills buzzed and rebar clacked at Rosilda Spring, on the Kaibab National Forest. Before my eyes, volunteers from Friends of Northern Arizona Forests, veteran fence-builders, sank T-posts into the ground, evenly spaced around the perimeter, then quickly unrolled wire mesh fabric and secured it with corner brackets. The final touch? A beautiful painted-wood sign.
The next morning, graduate students from Northern Arizona University arrived and together with TerraBIRDS, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering youth through gardening, planted 50 native willows within the area now protected by the fence. The fence doesn’t block all water access, but will keep the hungry mouths of sheep and cattle away from the green, leafy willows that only thrive close to water. Springs are small but critical water sources, and we look forward to watching the willows grow and seeing the variety of native wildlife that will come back to use this spring.
Lisa Winters
Research and Stewardship Volunteer Coordinator
U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
Pinyon pine and pinyon jay
The Colorado Plateau’s pinyon-juniper woodlands are home to a fascinating story of evolutionary cooperation between the pinyon pine and its resident jay. Pinyon jays rely on nutrient-dense pinyon pine seeds for food, caching them in the ground for later. Buried seeds, if forgotten, can germinate as new pinyon pine. This relationship of mutual dependence took ages to evolve. Yet an estimated 85 percent of pinyon jays have vanished since 1970, and pinyon pines are especially susceptible to droughts associated with climate change. Researchers believe a major reason for pinyon jay decline is the widespread destruction of pinyon-juniper forests, often to increase forage for livestock. The Bureau of Land Management recently proposed tearing pinyon-juniper out of 120,000 acres in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument alone. The Grand Canyon Trust is working to ensure that the long lines of evolutionary history in pinyon-juniper ecosystems remain intact in southern Utah and advocating for pinyon jays and pinyon pine in a changing climate. The pine and jay need each other, and they both need our help.
Mike Popejoy
Research Associate
JAKE HOYUNGOWA
New mural calls for water justice
In early September, 10 high school students journeyed to Kane Ranch, a remote homestead overlooking the Vermilion Cliffs, where they spent five days listening, telling stories, connecting with the land, and crafting one of Flagstaff’s boldest pieces of public art. After returning home, these students joined hands with their peers and local artists to tell their story through a mural that calls for water justice on the Colorado Plateau. Their piece, titled “Water is Life,” honors traditional ways of using and living on the land. It also illuminates the threats posed by extractive industry, colonialism, and greed, encourages resistance, resilience, community, and hope, and calls for bold action to solve our region’s water crisis. “We are your next politicians, public speakers, and activists,” one student called out to a large crowd that gathered to learn about the mural at its public unveiling. “You have a future generation to believe in. I know I do.”
Maria Archibald
Youth Leadership Program Manager
Also in this issue:
To know this world, you must see it from the ground. Read now ›