Reducing protection on public land will hurt Utah economy

Joshua Lenart, Utah state chapter leader of the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, has spent countless hours exploring the vast region. “There’s this sense in the rural communities of Utah that things are changing, that new people are coming to the area and that the economy has changed for good. Some of the people that have lived there for a long time, they feel like the Monuments represent the new people and the changes they see around them,” Lenart said. Many of these “old timers” are opposed to the new visitors and land management the National Monument brings. Native Americans, who’ve lived in the region much longer, broadly support the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase. The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, who worked for years to establish the monument, is made up of the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni and the Ute Indian Tribe. They support the region’s protections through Monument designation because rules allow traditional use of the land for foraging, hunting and gathering wood while also ramping up protection of Native cultural resources and history. Opponents of the Trump administration’s plans to remove land from the National Monuments say the region is better off because of the outdoor economy the monuments support. A report by Headwaters Economics, an independent research group that focuses on economic trends and public lands in the West. says jobs increased 42% since 2001 in the Grand Staircase-Escalante was given Monument status. The gains are primarily in the service sector from health care and tourism, the report says.