PUBLIC STATEMENT
Because the Grand Canyon Trust is committed to the preservation of wilderness-quality lands and irreplaceable cultural resources on the Colorado Plateau, we cannot support the Emery County Public Land Management Act of 2018 (H.R. 5727/S. 2809) in its current form. The bill is being sponsored by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who pushed President Trump to gut Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, and Representative John Curtis, who is also sponsoring legislation that would codify Trump’s unlawful 85 percent shrinkage of Bears Ears National Monument.
The Emery County Public Land Management Act:
- Neglects to protect more than 1 million acres of outstanding public lands as wilderness, and paves the way for industrial development of Utah’s wild heart;
- Undermines court-ordered travel-management planning, cementing in destructive and irresponsible off-road vehicle use forever;
- Transfers public lands to the state of Utah to manage for more motorized recreation, more trail-building, and to charge more fees for public use;
- Contains language on state land exchange that fails to include safeguards to involve the public and Native American tribes in land-exchange negotiations, and could allow for the transfer of public lands to the state of Utah within the original boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments.
“You’ll see public statements touting the bill’s supposed sound process, but Native American tribes were totally excluded from deliberations, and it shows,” said Tim Peterson, Utah Wildlands Director. “Countless important rock art panels and other cultural sites are left available for oil and gas drilling, and that’s just unacceptable. After working with Emery County for years prior to Representative Rob Bishop’s failed Public Lands Initiative (PLI) legislation, the Grand Canyon Trust was left out of the process for this iteration of the bill, and that shows too — Forest Service lands and cultural resources in particular get short shrift.”
“Utah’s politicians have a bad habit of wrapping their development schemes in a thin covering of so-called ‘conservation,’” Peterson continued. “The bill’s language on state land exchange and roads is particularly troubling. The bill would create conservation areas in name only, and set a destructive precedent for future land protection bills.”
“Much like Representative Rob Bishop’s Public Lands Initiative that failed in the last session of Congress, the Emery County bill is a big step backwards for conservation,” said Grand Canyon Trust Executive Director Ethan Aumack. “It leaves more than a million acres of magnificent public lands unprotected as wilderness. Places like Muddy Creek, the San Rafael Reef, Price River, Labyrinth Canyon, and Molen Reef deserve permanent protection, and that’s something this bill fails to do. Unless Curtis and Hatch are open to dramatic improvement, the bill deserves the same fate as the PLI — the recycle bin.”
