BY BRIAN MAFFLY
On her journey home to Seattle from Washington, D.C., Sally Jewell spent a few weeks this spring in New Mexico, Utah and Nevada visiting some of the lands set aside as national monuments under her watch as Interior Secretary.
No monument commanded more of her attention than Utah's Bears Ears, which she had previously visited over four days last July, hearing from tribal members who supported it and local officials who opposed it. Today she stands by the 1.3-million-acre designation President Barack Obama made Dec. 28, less than a month before leaving office.
"We worked very closely with our scientists, people on the ground, people in the communities that know these landscapes well, the tribes, particularly in case of Bears Ears, that understood what's needed for hunting, gathering and traditional practices and sacred sites. Those shaped the boundaries of these monuments which were very carefully thought out," she said in an interview Tuesday with The Salt Lake Tribune...