Monuments

A long time ago, in the context of Colorado Roadless, I raised the question of whether some natural resource/public lands issues are simply too complex for the news media to tell the story. When that happens (“it’s too complex”), it seems like the natural reaction is to find a simpler story.. usually good guy vs. bad guys. If we believe these stories, though, and trust “the media”, we naturally end up thinking that there are a lot of “bad” people out there, (including people in the industries that keep our buildings heated and cooled, and provide the electrons that power the internet) and get more worried/despairing/angry about the state of the world today.

Kevin Franck sent this by Jim Stiles in the Canyon Country Zephyr.

More than three years have passed since the idea of a “Bears Ears National Monument” was first introduced to the general public. One of the most far-reaching and expensive coast-to-coast marketing campaigns ever promoted by the powerful outdoor industry and their allies in the mainstream environmental community clearly contributed to the decision by President Obama to create the monument in the last days of his administration. Obama’s interior secretary, Sally Jewell, had previously served as CEO of REI, Inc, one of the largest outdoor retailers in the world.

(Jewell’s predecessor, Ken Salazar, promised Utahns in 2011 that monument designation was not being considered by the Obama administration.)

Those two forces came together to sell an agenda to the American Public and the mainstream media, from the national level to the local, often became a willing mouthpiece for that agenda. It became an un-debated, unchallenged “fact” that only monument status could save the area from rampant and imminent destruction from the energy industry and archaeological looters.

I don’t claim to be knowledgeable on many issues, and I try to limit my participation to stories that I know enough to comment on. But I have lived in southeast Utah for more than 40 years, I have been intimately connected to the vast wild country in San Juan County and to the two buttes known as “the Bears Ears” for even longer. I was once a strong proponent of the environmental lobby in Utah and many years ago even served on the board of directors of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. But in the past 20 years, environmentalists have forged alliances with the outdoor industry and turned a blind eye to the impacts their partnerships were creating.

In 2018, misinformation about southeast Utah, the monument and the people has been a particular source of frustration. In an effort to set the record straight, this publication has written and posted more than 50,000 words on the subject of Bears Ears National Monument. It’s been a Quixotic effort— not once has a major media source been able to contradict a single word, but the truth is, they won’t even try.

I think the whole piece is worth reading because it shows how difficult it would be (even in an 8 minute video segment) to even describe some of the complexity of the issue. I also wonder whether the same people who think it’s a bad idea for a former uranium/coal/oil and gas lobbyist to head the EPA, think that it was fine for a CEO of a regulated industry (recreation) to serve at the helm of Interior.

The proposed vegetation management projects (apparently) targeted in the SUWA commercial we discussed here are part of the Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative, a partnership effort with the State, BLM and private groups linked here.

Why is the State responding to an ad that attacks the BLM?
-The project depicted in the SUWA ad was funded and completed through the State of Utah’s Watershed Restoration Initiative (WRI).
-Funding for this project came from several different sources including: Bureau of Land Management (sage-grouse funds), State of Utah general fund (tax dollars), —
– State of Utah fuels reduction fund, Foundation for North American Sheep, The Mule Deer Foundation and Sportsman for Fish and Wildlife.
-The State of Utah issued contracts for the chaining operation, the aerial seeding, the seed purchase, the cultural resource surveys and many other parts of the project.
-State of Utah employees were involved in the planning and implementation of the project. Click this link for more information on the project shown in the SUWA ad.

What is Chaining?
-Chaining is a management tool used by WRI and the BLM to reduce pinyon and juniper trees to make way for more usable forage for wildlife and livestock.
-It involves the dragging of a large anchor chain between two crawler tractors.
-The chain rolls across the ground removing trees while simultaneously tilling the soil to prepare the seed bed for seeding.
-Chaining operations always involve an aerial application of seed to help the area recover and thrive following treatment.
-Chaining has been used by state and federal agencies since the 1950s.

Why do the BLM and WRI use this technique?
-One of the major threats to both Sage Grouse and Mule Deer is the ongoing increase of pinyon and juniper trees in Utah.
-Pinyon and juniper stands, like our higher elevation timber stands, need to be managed. Chaining and the seeding that follows helps to diversify these even-aged stands of trees and create areas that provide better habitat and forage for wildlife and livestock.
-Chaining breaks up the often continuous and dangerous fuels, this reduces the size and intensity of fires, saving millions of dollars in fire suppression costs.
-Chaining is not the only, or the most common, treatment technique we use to diversify these over-mature stands of pinyon and juniper trees but it is the least expensive and most useful for large project areas.
-Chaining is used in older stands of pinyon and juniper where the trees have almost completely driven out grasses, flowering plants and shrubs. We call these late succession or phase III stands.
-These older stands of pinyon and juniper provide very little usable habitat for wildlife or forage for livestock.
-Chaining reduces competition for water and nutrients to help seeded plants to better establish and grow. Similar to how we weed our gardens and till the soil before we plant each spring.
-Research and monitoring from across the west has shown the long term success of this treatment technique. Studies have shown significant increases in grasses, flowering plants and shrubs following chaining as well as increases in available soil moisture.
-Some anecdotal evidence exists showing an increase in stream and spring flows as well as ground water levels following pinyon and juniper removal projects. WRI is currently funding long term study with the Utah Geological Survey to confirm this.

Are Chaining projects currently being planned or implemented within the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (GSENM)?
-No green tree chaining projects are currently under consideration for FY2019 funding through DNR or Utah’s Watershed Restoration Initiative.
-The use of chaining as a treatment technique depicted in the SUWA commercial was specifically forbidden by the old GSENM management plan. The new management plan has yet to be written.
-The treatment polygons highlighted by SUWA depicts areas currently under consideration for future restoration treatments within the old and new GSENM boundaries.
It is our understanding that these highlighted future project areas represent pre-monument chaining treatments that are being considered for maintenance projects to remove any remaining and invading pinyon and juniper trees.
-The treatment techniques being considered in these areas include hand removal, mulching, chaining, etc.
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And I will add: The monument management plan, which is the guiding document for land management for the lands both inside and excluded from GSENM, indicates that chaining is limited to areas that contain late seral stage sagebrush stands, and is restricted from being used on live pinyon and juniper trees. Also note that these projects are designed, in part, to improve habitat for sage grouse.

I guess I have to say I was a little suspicious that the SUWA ad brought up the Trump Administration. As many of you know, the wheels of Federal project planning move very.. very… slowly. So, for there to be a difference between Trump and Obama administration policies, the rules in the Plan about where and what you can do would have had to have been changed. And you don’t have to follow this stuff very closely to know that that takes a while (writing one, public comment periods, litigation and so on). Well, as it turns out, this kind of project was OK under the Monument management plan (approved 2000). You can look it up yourself here.

RM-2 The use of machinery (e.g., roller chopping, chaining, plowing, discing) may be allowed in all zones except the Primitive Zone. Chaining has been used in the past to remove pinyon and juniper prior to reseeding with perennial grasses. Due to the potential for irreversible impacts to other Monument resources, such as archaeological sites and artifacts, and paleontological resources, this treatment method will not be used to remove pinyon and juniper. It may be allowed to cover rehabilitation seed mixes with soil after wildfires only where:
• noxious weeds and invasive non-native species are presenting a significant threat to Monument resources or watershed damage could occur if the burned area is
not reseeded,
• it can be demonstrated that Monument resources will not be detrimentally affected (i.e., completion of full archaeological, paleontological, threatened and
endangered species and other resource clearance and consultation),
• it is determined that seed cover is necessary for the growth of the native species proposed for seeding, and • other less surface disturbing measures of covering seed are not available or cannot be applied in a timely manner.
Visual impacts of chaining will also be minimized near routes and other points of concern by covering the native seed mix with harrows or light chains. The GSENM
Advisory Committee will be consulted before the use of machinery for treatments is permitted.

I used the bold about the pinyon and juniper because that’s what it showed in the SUWA commercial. So SUWA says the Trump Administration is doing a bad thing that is different from what used to happen, but it’s really not. Now I don’t know if that is a “lie,” or an “inaccuracy” or a “shading of the truth.” The point seems to be to get people worked up about something that’s been going on for a long time, but was presumably OK under the previous administration. I’m going to call this Trumpfoolery. It’s worth asking, what’s in for SUWA to do this? Don’t they lose more in credibility than they gain in…whatever?

The people of Utah were using these vegetation practices long before President Trump entered politics, and they are incorporated into a Clinton Administration Monument plan. More on the practices in the next post.

Another piece worth reading by Jim Stiles of the Canyon Country Zephyr. Here’s the link.

Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell came to Utah to hear both sides of the issue. But PLEASE…let’s be honest. No one thought Jewell would come down on the side of monument opponents. And as the presidential election approached and almost all the pundits were predicting a Hillary landslide of “historic proportions,” Bears Ears National Monument felt like a foregone conclusion. President Obama would make the proclamation, President Clinton would implement it.

Then November 8 happened.

Knowing that a Trump administration would be taking office in January and had already expressed its specific opposition to the monument, would Obama create the monument anyway?

He did. On December 28, the proclamation decreed a 1.35 million acre Bears Ears National Monument.

Stiles then goes back and talks about a Bush administration last-minute group of lease sales in 2008.

“The Salt Lake Tribune noted that: ” DeChristopher won bids on 22,000 acres in Utah’s red rock country, near Arches and Canyonlands national parks.” Environmentalists had accused the Bush administration of trying to ram through the sale of the environmentally sensitive land before President Obama was sworn in.”

Later, in January 2009, as Obama took the oath, environmentalists without exception believed that the new administration should not be bound or conflicted by the “last minute” efforts of the previous administration to impose its will on the next and contrary to the stated environmental objectives of the new Interior Department.

And months later, as expected by everyone, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that, “Obama’s Interior Department eventually ruled that its predecessor had incorrectly administered the lease sale and yanked the parcels off the auction block.”

In 2008, Republicans were doing what they’re philosophically bound to do. In 2016. It was the Democrats playing the exact same strategy, with the shoe on the other foot.

The idea that there is a fundamental difference of opinion as to how public lands should be utilized is no secret. The fact that so many environmentalists are acting shocked and outraged is a tad silly.

Of course they aren’t really shocked- they are telling that story to make political points and attract donations.. to feed political campaigns to elect more friends to get more of what they want next time. I don’t blame them. In fact, I don’t really blame anyone, because the way the world has gone it’s very hard to find both sides of any given story when you are not an expert (except in the areas we cover in this blog). This environment is a petri dish into which partisanites (or partinsanities as I call them) are uniquely adapted to flourish. The secret that partinsanities won’t tell you in their media (and almost all non-local media is theirs nowadays, whether they admit it or not) is that there are many things about public lands that people agree on, and not every idea of the “other” party is bad.

Anyway, Stiles has an interesting take, and what I didn’t understand until now was that both of these last minute deals were in the same area..maybe it’s some kind of revenge scenario for the lease sales of 2009? How did the area become “winner takes all until next election” instead of “let’s work it out?”. I wonder how that dynamic gets started and how it can be turned around.