Jeff C/Sierra Club
One of the more sublime locations on the planet is the 1.4 million acre Greater Canyonlands in southern Utah, a place that inspires fierce protective feelings amongst those who don't want gas, oil, tar sands, or uranium companies to set up shop there.
Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and outdoor related businesses would like President Obama to invoke the Antiquities Act of 1906 and, with one Teddy Roosevelt-like stroke of the pen, proclaim Greater Canyonlands a national monument This group includes Aron Ralston of 127 Hours fame, the adventurer who amputated his own arm after being trapped for six days in one of those canyons. He writes:
In doing so, [President Obama] will save the region from imminent degradation and allow others the chance to hoot, yell, and holler -- feeling most alive -- as they create stories among the sensual orange canyons, frog-lined pools, and split-crack spires of the red-rock.
A more measured approach is being proposed by Utah Democrats who gathered on the steps of the capitol in Salt Lake City yesterday. They have drafted a joint resolution calling for the protection of Greater Canyonlands, but rather than calling for the Antiquities Act, they want lots of public input, plus facts and statistics.
According to the Salt Lake City Tribune, their resolution "seems tailored to avoid the kind of political blowback that arose with President Bill Clinton’s 1996 designation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument."
And boy, was there blowback. President Clinton's decision, made at a ceremony at the rim of the Grand Canyon, enraged mining interests and conservatives and led Utah's Republican Senator Orin Hatch to call it the “mother of all land grabs.”
Acknowledging the deep-red conservatism of Utah, and hoping to head off a similar firestorm for President Obama over Canyonlands, resolution sponsor Senator Jim Dabakis said:
"We hope to bring a calm, rational, productive and civil discussion full of facts and figures about what should be protected as the premier recreational lands in the United States. It’s a great treasure we have been given stewardship over. We are open to what kind protections should be built."
A calm, rational discussion over unspoiled Western lands? Here's hoping.
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I expect the same response that we get when Warren Buffet calls for increased taxes on billionaires:
"There's nothing to stop you from buying it yourself and setting up a foundation to keep it the way you like it."
And the opil, gas and uranium industries are going to just go along without problems, right?
The big problem with the West (said as one who grew up there) is Westerners, who can't see beyond the end of their noses and would happily kill grandma if there was a penny's profit in the act.
Seems like most of those bankers were similarly motivated to those extremes that caused the collapse in 2008 were on the east coast. Profiteers are the same no matter where they are from.
it is the objective of all such repuber PRIVATEERS to get onb board with bankster thieves to implement debt cash flow in return for placing public property in hock so that they can foreclose on it to steal it. This path is clear.
Cap'n Mitt was their Cayman ship raider who tried to get elected to steal lands and homes for certain thieves outside the U.S. Even though he did not win, his operation and crew of thieves are still in place and running a FORM vs SUSBSTANCE tax swindle against the people of the U.S. Their ambition to steal will never never end until such law that makes the attempts to destroy democracy and take public lands a capital crime.
And this has ... what? to do with protecting awesome land in Utah?
Hey Utah, while you're at it, how about giving back Indian treaty land that's been stolen!
The Ute will be happy to give you a map. Free!
"We hope to bring a calm, rational, productive and civil discussion full of facts and figures..."
It's already a hopeless cause...Calm, rational, productive along with facts & figures - are not something the GOTP does.....
Calm, rational, productive, with the Utah Republicans? I have to say I have always something mentally deficient in a Democrat who was willing to live in Utah of all places.
Strictly an accident of birth, I assure you, and it took me forty years to get past the Republican brainwashing that is epidemic here...
"Radical environmentalists" is one of Orrin Hatch's favorite ways of swearing...
Aron Ralston is all that is man.
I know and love the canyons of Southern Utah having returned to them again and again my entire adult life. While it is an unutterably beautiful landscape, it is incredibly fragile as well. A single hiker, cutting across the land can leave bootprints in some places that will last for months, or even years.
In the coming months, we will not only hear about "land grabs," jobs, and State's rights, but we will hear the apparent softer sounds of "environmentally sensitive mining techniques" and "low-impact drilling." They are all lies. You cannot have a mine, or well or road in this land without having a huge impact on the ecosystem. The water that is the lifeblood of the land is so easy to pollute. The air that is the cleanest in the lower 48 will lose its unbelievable blue brightness. The plants and animals that live in one of the harshest environments in the Country will disappear. And the jobs that the Utahns will hear about will rob them of their ways of living and will leave when the coal and oil and uranium are gone, leaving nothing but wreckage behind.
I have much the same fears about western North Dakota. I moved away a long time ago, and was back there last summer. It was deeply disturbing about just how much Williston had changed, from being a sleepy little farming town to a stinking, crowded, rude town. Reminded me of Texas, really. The pollution is just awful and you can't get away from it. And these were promised to be clean extraction wells. Yeah, right!
>A calm, rational discussion over unspoiled Western lands...
That won't happen here, alas, but I salute you, Kent, for bringing some publicity to this subject. Lord knows how many of us have burned ourselves out with righteous indignation trying to help set aside as much wilderness as possible while the developers in the Legislature work to thwart every move; besides the extensive red rock areas south of here, the High Unitas Primitive Area to the east--which is connected by a "land corridor" to Yellowstone and the Jackson Hole area--remains essentially unspoiled, but exists as a sore spot among the "anti gubm'nt" crowd. They are angry at any restrictions being placed on their "right" to take SUV's and ATV's wherever they want. Their attitudes on that subject are identical with their views on firearms.
If anyone is interested in supporting this cause, you can sign the petition at jdabakis.com and share this link with your friends to do the same.
It's a magnificent area that needs protection, and it already belongs to the people of the United States because it's federal land. I first went there in 1963 to work on a range research project. The state legislators have a good idea, but they're going to need a lot of help to overcome the opposition of county commissioners who act as if they own it. We can all help by signing the petition.