AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN AT THE END OF HIS TERM OF OFFICE AS 46TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Bears Ears National Monument in southeast Utah, Biden’s legacy of accomplishments in Indian Country, and a remarkable record of conservation successes have been left to the whims of an unstable president and his radical administration. It didn’t have to be that way. Did it?
A DEEP DIVE At risk, a “geography of the soul”: Creation, conflict, and the future of Bears Ears National Monument in southeast Utah
Mr. President,
About that “review” of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments you ordered up three years ago:
I was hopeful it would’ve involved local Utah input, including Native Americans for and against monument creation.
(Yes, many Native Americans are understandably suspicious because of the federal government’s record of duplicity and genocidal horror in their relationships with America’s Indigenous peoples. They don’t trust people like yourself.)
I was hoping some of the billions flowing into programs as a result of your extraordinary legislative accomplishments would be funneled into Bears Ears.
Mr. President, it’s been eight years since President Obama created Bears Ears NM and federal land managers still haven’t figured out how to pick up tourists’ trash and crap.
Excuse my French.
When I say “crap,” I mean that in the stinkiest sense.
Gone are the days when BLM and the Forest Service somehow found money to put rangers in the air and on horseback to patrol wildlands for scofflaws and miscreants.
On your watch, on Trump’s, and on Obama’s, only a handful of BLM staffers stood between the treasure trove of archeological artifacts and geological wonders in Bears Ears Country and tourist hordes, wilderness adventurers, vandals, and professional looters.
Are federal law enforcers up to the task? Nowadays, they back off when bullied by a few rootin’, tootin’, pistol packin’ sagebrush rebels. Irreplaceable flora and fauna — “protected” by statute — have been destroyed.
I recall the story about the mysterious obelisk of San Juan County about four years ago.
It was everywhere.
It made news from the South China Morning Post to The New York Times to Al-Jazeera and has drawn comments from all corners, including Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
For the global news outlets, the “Big Foots,” the story morphed into a whodunit and a question of artistic appreciation.
Within about a week of the obelisk’s discovery, hundreds of curiosity seekers flooded into one of the remotest locations in the lower 48 states for a look-see. And they trashed the place. There were no Porta Potties or trash cans anywhere around.
The looky-loos flocked in, guided by GPS coordinates published on the Internet.
It became a kind of hippy-dippy mashup and soft rock celebration for a few Burning Man-ish Boomers and their progeny just having fun amid a pandemic.
And your BLM, Mr. President, joined in. Here’s Kimberly Finch, BLM spokeswoman:
“We also are enjoying the conversations, the inspiration, the fun that people are having with it. We completely encourage that. So we hope people will continue to have fun with it and to be safe as far as accessing the site.”
Nothing that I could find indicated Native Americans were offered (or sought) a chance to weigh in as stakeholders during the media frenzy or anything else despite the fact that the area is considered sacred by many.
I mean, give me a break. Can you imagine the outrage if Navajo activists broke into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan and put up examples of their ancient traditional art and then danced around in celebration?
Critics of creation of Obama’s 1.3 million acre Bears Ears NM and its full restoration under Biden predicted that monument designation would protect nothing.
Prophetic, right?
Democrats had control of Congress for a while, and you, Mr. President, and Nancy Pelosi weren’t shy about wielding power and burning through cash for much-needed programs. Did you forget about funding needed to actually protect what you “protected” on paper by creating a national monument?
For eight years, Bears Ears National Monument has offered only an illusion of conservation.
Who foots the bill now? Trump and Utah Republicans? Fat chance. The environmentalists who poured tens of millions of dollars into a multi-year national campaign to create it?
An excise tax on backpacks, mountain bikes, and ATVs earmarked to beef up BLM and Forest Service law enforcement and monument maintenance was never really an option. Was it?
As you probably know, hunters and anglers have been forever paying to preserve their pastimes. Just a reminder.
Mr. President, your record on conservation is remarkable, possibly historic in the grand scheme of things:
The Moab to Mojave Conservation Corridor stretches from Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southwestern Utah, to which President Biden restored protections in 2021; through Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona and Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada, both established by President Biden in 2023; and reaches the deserts and mountains of southern California that are being protected with today’s designation of the Chuckwalla National Monument.
When Jon Jarvis visited the University of Utah in 2018, I asked him what he thought were his biggest achievements and disappointments as Obama’s director of the National Park Service. He said he was proudest of adding a bunch of units to the system. However, he said the biggest failure was an inability to protect, preserve, restore, and maintain those units.
Mr. President, the 3,000-word overview that describes your conservation record – including protection of 15 national monuments and the establishment of 10 new national monuments, the expansion of two existing national monuments, and the restoration of three more — says nothing about the elephant in the room: funding.
Obama put Bears Ears on the map, then went away: “Here Donald, deal with it.” And Trump did. He gutted it. He’ll likely do it again.
Recall in 2010, Obama’s first Interior secretary, Ken Salazar, sought middle ground, a solution grounded in representative democracy: “I do not plan on making any wilderness or monument without local support. …”
But it wasn’t well received among some of the “no retreat, no surrender” environmentalists. They were skeptical of Salazar. Just so much “blah, blah, blah.” He was “too moderate” for their tastes:
“Salazar stated to Governor Herbert (of Utah) that President Obama would not use his authority under the Antiquities Act to establish any national monuments without local permission (which means there will not be any). Two wild areas void of protection in Utah are under consideration: the San Rafael Swell and Cedar Mesa (now popularly known as Bears Ears). This means that basically Salazar gave Utah’s governor veto power over the President of the United States’ discretion to create new national monuments, discretion that almost every President has used since passage of the Antiquities Act in 1906.”
Despite fears of writer and environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams, quoted above, San Rafael Swell received protection legislatively when the 2019 John Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act was enacted.
Unilateral national monument designation by the president invoking the Antiquities Act was not required. It is now the law of the land, given the stalemate in Congress, virtually irreversible.
Same with the Washington County Growth & Conservation Act of 2008, launched by former U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett, a Republican, and Rep. Jim Matheson, a Democrat.
The two politicians reached across the partisan divide and brought together adversaries, cajoled and arm-twisted and added enticements here and there. The result was inserted into the massive Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009 as the Washington County Lands Bill. The Omnibus act was passed by a Senate and House controlled by Democrats and signed into law by Obama.
The Lands Bill conveyed 353 federally owned acres to the county and the cities of St. George and Hurricane, which were used for open space, expansion of the county jail, an equestrian park, recreation, and public administrative offices.
Like the Dingell bill, it’s now law of the land and virtually irreversible, while Bears Ears National Monument is hanging by a thread.
Perhaps that’s not possible nowadays, Mr. President, but I was hopeful that if you restored Obama’s version of Bears Ears NM or even expanded it in a way that some Native Americans preferred you’d at least do it in-person here in Utah, facing tough-as-nails critics with memories of Obama’s lame-duck proclamation and President Clinton’s election-year monkey business in creating Grand Staircase-Escalante NM.
To folks in Utah, it seemed like neither Clinton nor Obama could summon the courage for that teeny symbolic act of respect. After almost 30 years, it still irks Utahns that actor Robert Redford was invited to Clinton’s Grand Staircase signing ceremony in Arizona and their elected representatives were not.
Then-Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said he only found out about the whole thing when he read it in The Washington Post.
Mr. President, there was a chance — albeit minuscule — to correct what I believe was a mistake set in perpetual motion by Obama’s realpolitik to save the Antiquities Act. It could’ve demonstrated your vaunted ability to cross party and ideological lines to solve problems.
You stayed away.
I was hopeful you’d start a dialogue toward resolution of one of the country’s most intractable and politically perilous environmental issues.
Never happened.
President Obama had reservations about using his authority under the Antiquities Act to create Bears Ears National Monument.
You apparently had no such qualms.
Your unrestrained use of the act to restore Obama’s monument, create, and expand others not only cynically undercut principles of locally driven representative democracy, but hardened existing anti-federal government, hyper-partisan attitudes across Utah and the West.
The Antiquities Act itself has been targeted.
Don’t get me wrong, Mr. President. Your administration enabled, empowered, and enacted historic advancements for Indigenous peoples.
Yours was the most pro-Native presidency in United States history.
But however much of that legacy has been safeguarded by enactment of the American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act, Buy Indian Act, and the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization Act of 2022, the big deal — precedent-setting tribal roles in consultation and co-stewardship of their ancestral lands — is politically tenuous, subject to Trump’s pique.
Mr. President your two Presidential Memoranda that guided the bureaucracy in addressing tribal consultation — the 2021 Memorandum on Tribal Consultation and Strengthening Nation-to-Nation Relationships and the 2022 Memorandum on Uniform Standards for Tribal Consultation — will likely be consigned to File 13 by Trump.
And the ping-pong politics of Bears Ears continues.
All the best,
Bill Keshlear
