Category Archives: National Parks, Forests and Monuments

Rob Bishop is flunking economics.

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Utah Representative Rob Bishop has brought out Southern Utah University professor Ryan Yonk, to give testimony to the Public Lands Subcommittee about his recently issued paper, a paper without peer review, asserting wilderness and protective designations for federal lands have a negative economic impact on local communities.  No wonder right wing climate change deniers like Bishop feel like academia can be bought.  Just as when Bishop towed Escalante Mayor Jerry Taylor before Congress to testify against national monuments and Taylor received serious backlash from his own chamber of commerce when he got back to Escalante, Yonk is getting backlash.  Headwater Economics and  Republican Jim DiPeso of thedailygreen.com and the policy director for Republicans for Environmental Protection reply.  . . . more>>

It is not Disneyland out there, but how about a warning?

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This one seems like a tricky call to me.  The natural outdoors is not Disneyland and we all need to look out for ourselves.  But in this case would it have been so hard for the Division of Wildlife Resources or the Forest Service to put up signs that warned campers of the threat?  Some judges say yes, some say no.  Who is right?  . . . more>>

More Republican assault on our wild land heritage.

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The right-wing notion that the environment is the enemy has come around blindingly fast.  The notion doesn’t make enough sense to stand on its own.  Rather, it is being PR packaged by big industry special interest in a form of pernicious cronyism.  Here, the Grand Canyon Trust reports that a group of  Republican lawmakers, including Senator McCain, is introducing legislation to stop the Obama administration from blocking new mining claims around the Grand Canyon.  There won’t be many Americans who think that the Grand Canyon is a good place to mine.  What are these cowboys thinking? . . . more>>

It’s out there when both the right and left are alarmed.

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From the  Adventure Journal today, The National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act, sponsored by Utah’s Congressman Rob Bishop and approved by the House Committee on Natural Resources 26 to 17, waives the power of 36 environmental and other laws within 100 miles of U.S. borders nationwide (angering environmentalists, since that territory includes Olympic National Park, Big Bend National Park, Allegheny National Forest, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and Glacier National Park), and cuts the knees out from under the Department of Agriculture as well, which means all rights to timber claims, grazing, and farming would go by the wayside.  Continue reading →

What if your “way of life” is destructive?

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The main argument for grazing cows on public land in the West is that it is and has been a “way of life.”  Even the ranchers admit it is not economic.  The rugged cowboy is a favorite modern day icon for the West and we all often feel a fondness for the idea he is still out there.  Until you see a creek or meadow after the cows have been through.  Here’s an article in the Los Angeles Times where allotments are being rested from cows, and allowed to recover.  Will the National Forest Service make the right decision to keep the cows our, save a landscape and a rare trout species, or will “way of life” prevail?  . . . more>>

Soren Jespersen answers the extractors about jobs

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Kirsten and I had dinner with Soren and his wife Kristen while we were in Steamboat Springs last week.  Soren is the son of my old Wasatch Advisors partner, Roy Jespersen, and it was good to catch up with Soren and find out what he was working on for The Wilderness Society.  I was disappointed to learn that public land grazing is considered a third rail by The Wilderness Society, but encouraged about the work they were doing, along with ranchers, on protecting land that ought not to be drilled and mined.  Soren published this about Salazar’s visit to the West recently.  . . . more>>

A second century of stewardship and engagement

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What a great title for legislation from a venerable name in U.S. conservation support. Yesterday Kirsten and I drove through the San Juan Mountains from Durango to Ouray, during the peak of fall colors, and we think it may be about the most beautiful landscape we have ever seen. So it is gratifying to see that there is right now a proposal to designate more than 60,000 acres in southwestern Colorado as either wilderness or a special management area back before Congress.   U.S. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet are reintroducing the San Juan Mountains Wilderness Act, Continue reading →

Preaching conservation without a choir

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Western politicians and special interest local factions have always been against the idea of protecting and conserving tracts of public land.  It’s no different today.  Kirsten and I were just in Moab this week — it’s now late in September– and the town is still packed with tourists.   We had breakfast with a couple from upstate New York who were blown away by the vast beauty of the open West.  Folks from around the U.S. and the world flock in for a taste of America’s wild heritage, to the point that we risk loving the land to death.  Yet our local politicians speak as if conservation is a D.C. based political conspiracy that hurts the West.  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is in Utah promoting conservation this week.  Is it representative that he gets the cold shoulder?  . . . more>>

World’s first International Dark Sky Park is in Utah

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 International Dark Sky Park

In 2006 the International Dark-skies Association designated a small park in Utah, Natural Bridges National Monument, as the world’s first International Dark-sky Park, thereby setting the bar incredibly high for those parks that wanted to follow suit.  The skies above Natural Bridges are amongst the darkest in the USA.  Once a source of wonder–and one half of the entire planet’s natural  environment—the star-filled nights of just a few years ago are vanishing in a yellow haze. Human-produced light pollution not only mars our view of the stars; poor lighting threatens astronomy, disrupts ecosystems, affects human circadian rhythms, and wastes energy to the tune of $2.2 billion per year in the U.S. alone.  Protecting the dark skies of Utah is one of my passions, we recently created a Colorado Plateau Chapter of the International Dark Sky Association which is holding it’s second annual Heritage Dark Sky Festival in Torrey this coming weekend.

Read more about Steve Owens, a Brit who has received a traveling fellowship to visit and report on all the dark sky parks starting with Natural Bridges.  Why waste a dark sky?  . . . more>>