Bears Ears National Monument

[PaleoRob]

A little bit surprised that no one has started a post about this development (unless I missed it somewhere), but many of you have probably already seen it on the news or on the Facebooks. A number of the Utah hikes indexed on here will now have to be reclassified as being in Bears Ears National Monument as opposed to just "BLM" or "Cedar Mesa special use." I'm sure folks on here many different opinions on it.

[flagscott]

I think Zinke was just pandering during his nomination hearing since he made these comments while being grilled by a Utah senator. Looking at Zinke's history, he's not at all in line with that "states reclaiming federal land" garbage that Utah has been pushing for the last few years-- and that's what this pressure from Utah is really all about.

Yes and no. Zinke doesn't sound like an outright extremist on federal land ownership issues, like some of those Utah folks. But Zinke did just vote to make turning over federal lands to the states "cost free" in budget accounting, which could grease that process somewhat. Also, Zinke's proposals to expand drilling, mining, logging, etc. may be just as bad as giving the lands to the states; my fear about turning over federal lands to states (shared by most people who don't want federal lands given to the states) isn't that state ownership is bad per se. It's that the states will see these lands as a cash cow for logging, mining, drilling, etc., and state environmental protections are generally much weaker than federal protections. Zinke can reduce federal environmental regulations and make a lot of that resource exploitation happen with the stroke of a pen while keeping the land federal.

This is why I don't get why all the hunters' groups got behind Zinke so fast. Yeah, he's not Mike Lee, but he's also not someone who is likely to do much to protect habitat for game animals from drilling or to make sure that waters are clean for fishing.

[Tough_Boots]

@flagscott
don't get me wrong-- Zinke is definitely not good news. Though he has made plenty of strong enough statements about keeping western lands under federal protection. How he protects or doesn't protect them is what I worry about. He may test the waters to see what he can get away with in regards to the national monument designation but I don't think he'll hand the land over to the state.

This is why I don't get why all the hunters' groups got behind Zinke so fast.

Or how he ever landed one of Montana's senate seats. That state is a prime example of the negative effects of mining and global warming on the environment.

[chumley]

Utah has five new national monuments!

Shah Jáa NM
Indian Creek NM
Grand Staircase NM
Escalante Canyons NM
Kaiparowits NM

Let the lawsuits begin!

Story with maps, etc:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/201 ... disappear/

[Jim]

Wait, so the solution to a problem that didn't exist was to break two monuments up into 5? What?!

[chumley]

The governor seems to think that nobody should worry about anything because it's all actually a good thing!
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865 ... -Ears.html