Bears Ears Spared a 480-foot Tower, for Now

 by Tim Peterson, Cultural Landscapes Director

As summer monsoons soak Bears Ears, greening up plants and filling arroyos with rushing water, we have some good news to share. A proposal to build a 480-foot-tall communications tower on state lands inside Bears Ears National Monument has been withdrawn.

Surprise proposal  

In 2023, a company called Vertical Bridge (the nation’s largest private owner and operator of communications infrastructure) began the process of attempting to build an enormous blinking skyscraper-height communications tower inside Bears Ears National Monument north of Highway 95 and southeast of Natural Bridges National Monument. The planned tower was to be the tallest man-made structure in the state of Utah. 

Vertical Bridge approached the Utah Trust Lands Administration to lease the land and sought approvals from San Juan County and the Federal Communications Commission. On February 8, 2024, the San Juan County Planning Commission approved a conditional use permit for the tower. This was the first we heard of Vertical Bridge’s plans.  

The parcel of land on which the behemoth structure would have been constructed is a state parcel — one that would have been subject to a congressional land exchange on which the Grand Canyon Trust had worked for two years before Utah’s governor and state legislature scuttled the win-win deal just days before the planning commission’s approval. Such an exchange would have made the state land there and throughout the Bears Ears region federal public land and part of the monument, and would have prevented the tower’s construction. 

Failure to properly consult Native nations

Site of the proposed communications tower. TIM PETERSON

Though the square-mile state parcel is inside the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument and just over three miles from Natural Bridges National Monument (the world’s first international dark-sky park), Vertical Bridge’s summary of environmental review for the tower didn’t mention either monument.  

Worse still, instead of consulting all five tribes of the Bears Ears Commission (the formal body established by proclamation to cooperatively manage Bears Ears National Monument), the contractor who prepared the environmental review document contacted only Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni. Though the contractor did not attempt to consult Hopi or Navajo (both part of the commission), the contractor did reach out to the Blackfoot, Crow, Eastern Shoshone, and Kiowa tribes. These tribes (currently located in Montana, Wyoming, and Oklahoma) do not have expressed cultural ties to the Bears Ears region. 

If erected, this alien-looking tower will be a spear in the heart of the Bears Ears area. I am also saddened to think there will likely be more inappropriate developments on Utah Trust Lands within Bears Ears...

– Former San Juan County Commissioner and Former Navajo Nation Council Delegate Mark Maryboy

A threat to Bears Ears’ dark skies, birds, wildlife, and cultural landscape

The environmental assessment summary report for the tower was posted to the Federal Communications Commission’s website in June 2024, and the public had about a month to comment on the proposal.

Our conservation partners at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance swung into action, gathering over 3,000 petition signatures in opposition and assembling a request for further environmental review. The Grand Canyon Trust joined that request, and to help people understand the area that would be disturbed, I visited the site, which contractors for Vertical Bridges had called "desert scrub," to get some photos and video.

In addition to lack of adequate tribal consultation and potential impact on the region’s famously dark night skies (a value for which Bears Ears was protected as a national monument), the tower threatened birds and wildlife and the monument’s natural and cultural landscape. 

Proposal withdrawn, tower proposal topples

TIM PETERSON

Just two days after the Federal Communications Commission comment period closed, Vertical Bridge withdrew its proposal. Though the Federal Communications Commission’s website lists the project as "withdrawn," as of August 1, 2024, Vertical Bridge had not withdrawn its application with the Utah Trust Lands Administration. It’s unclear whether the project will be back, but should it resurface, we’ll let you know.