Grand Staircase Needs Your Help Before April 13

 by Mary O'Brien, Utah Forests Director

Update: The public comment period closed on April 13, 2018. Read the Grand Canyon Trust's comments ›

April 13 is the due date for your comments on how Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument should be treated. How can you help? Support a sustainable alternative for the desert monument to ensure that fragile biological soil crusts, plants, springs, and the animals that depend on them can thrive.

Even if you've already commented, please take a moment to send another note supporting the alternative.

You see, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is being rushed into writing a management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which Trump proclaimed shall be reduced by 47 percent. Hence, the BLM has bowled through two local public meetings in Escalante and Kanab, Utah, and a public comment period that ends April 13, asking the public to say, right now, how the shrunken monument plus the lands Trump kicked out should be managed.

The Trust is opposing this shrinkage in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s shredding of the Grand Staircase. With the case tied up in court, when the call for comments on a new management plan went out, the Trust and several other organizations decided to submit an alternative plan.

This alternative, which we're calling the "Sustainable Grand Staircase-Escalante Alternative," will be submitted by the April 13 deadline. In it, we request that this alternative be considered in a management plan environmental impact statement alongside whatever alternative the BLM comes up with.

So what is the Grand Staircase-Escalante alternative we're proposing? 

It is two management plans combined into one, including:

• the original, very good 1999 Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument management plan that is currently in operation for the monument
• plus a proposal for grazing called the "sustainable grazing alternative." The 1999 monument management plan did not address grazing, but the BLM says the new management plan will.

In this simple formula: 

1999 monument management plan + sustainable grazing alternative = Sustainable Grand Staircase-Escalante Alternative

what is the "sustainable grazing alternative"? A grazing plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument written by the Trust, The Wilderness Society, and Great Old Broads for Wilderness, and submitted to the BLM in 2014, when the BLM was going to develop a grazing plan for the monument. The BLM agreed to include this sustainable grazing alternative alongside four other possible plans to compare its environmental consequences with the environmental consequences of each of the other alternatives. However, with Trump taking a hacksaw to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, that grazing planning process was halted.

Now's our chance

Now we have a chance to bring that sustainable grazing plan back to the attention of the BLM. When you send your comments in on or before April 13, please say “I support the Sustainable Grand Staircase-Escalante Alternative.”  

By doing so, you will help ensure that the Sustainable Grand Staircase-Escalante Alternative will appear in the new monument management planning process, where it will shine compared to the extract-and-degrade alternatives.

An important way to resist the cuts to the monument is to participate in the new monument management planning process.  

How do I comment?

• Submit your comment directly to the BLM via its online form › (The eplanning site sometimes goes down. If you don't get through right away, please take a break and try again later.)
• Send a comment by email to BLM_UT_CCD_monuments@blm.gov
• Prefer snail mail? Mail your comments to: Bureau of Land Management, 669 S Hwy 89A, Kanab, UT 84741.

Thank you for standing up for Grand Staircase.