Comment Now on Draft Grand Staircase-Escalante Plans

 by Mary O'Brien, Utah Forests Director

As you know, in December 2017, both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments were unlawfully slashed by the president. We’re challenging those illegal reductions in court, but, in the meantime, the administration is rushing out draft management plans for Grand Staircase, and adding your voice to the process now is critical. 

TAKE ACTION. Please submit a comment (in your own words) by November 30, 2018 ›

The draft plans are worse than we thought possible. The law requires that national monuments be managed “in a manner that protects the values for which the components of the system were designated.” In the case of Grand Staircase, that’s dinosaur fossils, dark skies, fragile biological soil crusts, clean air, and irreplaceable cultural resources and historic sites. But in its draft plans, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposes to downgrade all these and other values.

Instead, the BLM is proposing to turn the 22-year-old Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument into an industrial sacrifice zone. Of the four alternatives proposed for managing the reduced monument units, the BLM's preferred alternative (Alternative D) takes every opportunity to reduce protections for the resources and values for which the monument was protected in the first place.

Casual fossil collection

Grand Staircase is world-renowned for its fossils. More than two dozen species of dinosaurs have been discovered in the monument since its designation in 1996. The proposed management plans fail these fragile and irreplaceable treasures. Until a paleontological management plan is developed at some uncertain future date, the draft plans call for allowing “casual collection” of fossils by anyone, admitting that some rare fossils might end up in someone’s pickup truck by mistake, acknowledging that “loss of significant [fossil] specimens could occur.” 

Other troubling aspects of the draft plans include:

• Allowing mineral exploration and mining on just about all of the lands removed from monument status by the president. 
• Destruction of piñon-juniper forests so that non-native pasture grasses can be seeded to support even more cattle grazing.
• No protection of wilderness values in wilderness study areas, and allowing large groups of up to 25 people to camp in wilderness study areas.
• The creation of a cross-country off-road vehicle play area near Escalante.
• Legitimizing two illegal off-road vehicle routes in the backcountry.

We need you to write in defense of Grand Staircase

The plans cover not just the shrunken monument units, but all of the lands cut from the real Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Please write about your own experiences in the monument, what the place means to you and to the nation, and include any background or expertise on land management issues you may have. Please don’t copy and paste. Writing in your own words is vitally important in order for your comment to be fully considered. 

Wondering what else to write? Here are some important points to include:

• Alternative D will damage the monument. Alternative D (the preferred alternative) admits that it will damage the monument objects and values for which the monument was designated. 
• The most protective measures possible for monument objects must be applied to comply with the law, regulation, and policy. 
• There is an alternative — the Sustainable Grand Staircase-Escalante Alternative — that was proposed by 12 conservation organizations for both the monument Trump is tearing apart, and the lands that he kicked out. The BLM substituted a purposely unworkable version.
• Insist that the reasonable Sustainable Grand Staircase-Escalante Alternative be fully compared, piece by piece, to the destructive BLM “preferred” alternative.
• The BLM is wasting taxpayer money. The BLM has already spent more than $1 million on plans that likely won’t stand up to a legal challenge when they’re done, and for a shrunken monument that is illegitimate in the first place. 
• Planning in a hurry while the courts determine the legality of the monument reduction is poor public policy — both the taxpayers and the land lose. 
• The plans would imperil fragile biocrusts. Biocrusts — delicate, living desert soils — are one of the resources the monument was created to protect, but the BLM proposes to run cattle herds onto more than 97 percent of the land.
• The BLM must provide protections for biocrusts in its final plans. 
• Climate change isn’t mentioned in the plans. The drafts indicate the air would be more toxic and night skies wouldn’t be as dark, and no protection is considered for springs — important cultural treasures and biological lifelines.

All of these factors must be studied and acted upon in the final plans. 

TAKE ACTION. Please send a comment (in your own words) by November 30, 2018 › 

If you’d prefer to write a letter, you can mail it to: Bureau of Land Management, Attn: Matt Betenson, 669 S Hwy 89A Kanab, UT, 84741.

Public meetings

Escalante, Utah

Monday, October 15, from 4 to 7 p.m., Escalante High School, 70 N. 1 West, Escalante, Utah.

Kanab, Utah
Tuesday, October 16, from 4-7 p.m., Kanab Elementary School, 41 W. 100 North, Kanab, Utah.

We appreciate your commitment to defending and restoring Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The BLM is hustling to complete its management plans by year’s end in an effort to beat the courts and Congress, either of which could restore Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument's original boundaries. Adding your voice to the land management planning process now can only make things better. 

Ready. Get set. Comment now ›