Outdoor Retailer, the outdoor recreation industry’s largest trade show, has announced plans to cut ties with Utah in protest of the state’s opposition to the recently-created Bears Ears National Monument.
After 20 years of gathering in Salt Lake City, the trade show, which brings in approximately $45 million per year to the state, is now entertaining bids from prospective replacement hosts, including Colorado, Montana and Oregon. The move will come after its current contract expires next year.
The decision follows a meeting between the trade show, industry groups and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, in which the parties failed to resolve differences regarding Utah’s public land policy.
“Salt Lake City has been hospitable to Outdoor Retailer and our industry for the past 20 years, but we are in lockstep with the outdoor community and are working on finding our new home,” said Marisa Nicholson, Outdoor Retailer’s director, in a press release.
The move marks the latest in a series of escalating protests against the state of Utah’s position. On Feb. 7, Patagonia announced it would boycott the 2017 show — a response to the Utah legislature’s resolution asking President Trump to rescind the monument designation for Bears Ears. Several other high-profile retailers including Arc’teryx and Polartec have since joined Patagonia in a boycott.
“[Gov. Gary Herbert] and other Utah elected officials do not support public lands conservation nor do they value the economic benefits — $12 billion in consumer spending and 122,000 jobs — that the outdoor recreation industry brings to their state,” Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario said in a statement.
The American Alpine Club (AAC), based in Golden, collected more than 1,000 letters in support of protecting lands incorporated in the Bears Ears Monument, petitioning the Obama administration to protect the area.
“I’m just happy that the outdoor industry has been able to prove itself a significant enough economic engine that this [conversation] is becoming a real one and an important one,” says AAC CEO Phil Powers. “As opposed to years ago where people would have discounted this threat as unimportant.”
The monument
In the final month of his presidency, Barack Obama created the 1.4-million acre Bears Ears National Monument, the result of years of efforts by Native American groups and conservationists to further protect the area.
The monument is home to more than 100,000 ancestral Native American artifacts and structures, spectacular canyon country and world-class rock climbing. Many Native Americans consider the land sacred or spiritually significant.
The monument is now co-managed by the five tribes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition in collaboration with the federal government — specifically the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. According to University of Colorado Boulder law professor Charles Wilkinson, who has advised the five tribes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition for more than a year, it’s an unprecedented success for the tribes.
“This is the first time anywhere in the federal public lands system that we’ve had collaborative management,” Wilkins says. “It’s a tremendously promising development. The tribes’ traditional knowledge is going to combine with the practices of the majority of society, which are different, and I think their combination is going to be great.”
The land that now makes up Bears Ears has been used for mining, grazing and oil and gas extraction in the past.
“As undesignated BLM land, there were more opportunities for oil and gas extraction, mineral extraction and grazing,” Powers says. “A monument is going to be a more restrictive version of management.”
The monument designation will prevent new use contracts from being issued in an effort to protect the landscape itself as well as its archeological resources. Existing contracts will be grandfathered in, and hiking, hunting and fishing permits will still be available.
Increased funding from the federal government will help the park’s managers establish additional infrastructure, enforcement and education. Proponents also see the designation as an economic opportunity for surrounding communities.
“There will certainly be more tourist traffic because of the monument designation,” says CU law professor Sarah Krakoff. “If that kind of traffic is well managed and well regulated by the land managers then it’s often a longer-term economic boom for the surrounding areas than other kinds of development.”
But the designation is not universally popular. According to a poll conducted by the Salt Lake City Tribune and the Hinckley Institute of Politics, about half of Utahns opposed the monument designation and would like to see it overturned. Utah’s congressional delegation and Gov. Herbert signed a resolution earlier this month urging Trump to rescind the monument.
Opponents of the designation cite presidential overreach, the size of the monument (roughly 2.5 percent of the entire state) and potential negative economic implications of limiting the land’s use.
“By unilaterally locking up 1.35 million acres — an area roughly the size of the entire State of Delaware — the president has misused his authority under the Antiquities Act and violated assurances made by his Interior Secretary to take into account local concerns before making a monument designation,” Herbert said in a statement after Obama announced the monument. “Today’s designation demonstrates how overreach from the federal government often disregards the well-being and interests of rural Americans.”
The abundance of natural resources in the area varies. A 2016 drilling operation by Houston’s EOG Resources suggests some potential for oil and gas extraction, despite a general lack of drilling in the past. Mining has proven more successful — so much so that the Inter-Tribal Coalition’s original proposal for a 1.9 million-acre monument was trimmed down by 550,000 acres to accommodate future mining operations expected to occur in the area.
In any case, the area is so large that one couldn’t realistically expect Utah’s governing bodies to accept it flat out. With two-thirds of Utah’s land already under federal control, and the state being the fourth most conservative in the U.S., it would seem that Utah’s Republican representatives had little choice but to oppose the designation, even if that means losing Outdoor Retailer.
“That’s why we have the Antiquities Act,” AAC’s Powers says. “When our other institutions fail to get to the place they need to get to, we do have this tool to rise above partisanship and allow something important to happen when our other mechanisms don’t get the job done.”
Looking forward
Now that Outdoor Retailer has pulled out of Utah, the future of Bears Ears is as unclear as ever.
In theory, the monument could be rescinded or scaled back by either the president or Congress, but either option comes with its fair share of legal obstacles.
“If Congress reverses the monument, then that’s Congress’s prerogative. But I think that’s less likely to happen — it’s hard to get a public-lands bill through Congress that provides less protection,” Krakoff says. “Even this Congress would be reluctant to do that because, in general, the public likes protecting its public lands.”
President Trump has yet to take a public stance on Bears Ears. And there’s no historical precedent for a repeal of a national monument — no president has tried. That the Antiquities Act doesn’t explicitly mention it seems to suggest that he can’t, but modifications to the monument, like scaling back its boundaries, are less clear. Either way, any actions threatening the monument will surely be challenged in court.
“The tribes and conservation groups have put in a huge amount of work to have this accomplished. It’s been a tremendously hard thing to do. But President Obama did do it,” Wilkinson says. “If they try to scale it back, there’s no way we’re going to lie down and accept it.”
The threat of oil, gas or minerals development on greater Cedar Mesa has been greatly exaggerated.
Something like 15,000 acres of the BLM’s 4.5 million acre Monticello Planning Area has ever been developed for oil and gas. Nearly all of that is east of Highway 191 and operations are ending faster than new ones are starting at a rate of more than 2:1.
Mining in SJC is dead. The potential expansion mentioned was for the Daneros uranium mine, which asked to grow its footprint from 4.5 to a whopping 46 acres. I suppose it isn’t impossible that some portion of that 500,000 “missing” acres around Red Canyon could someday experience some development pressure, but I’d wager it’ll stay super wild.
There are no guarantees funding will be commensurate with the new tourist traffic. In fact, given the persistent underfunding of the national park and monument system generally and the addition of the Trump factor, I’d say the odds are roughly zero.
The majority of the area already had wilderness-ish designations or was already being managed by BLM/FS for its wilderness qualities. Bottom line: making a monument of the area formerly not known as Bears Ears was a solution in search of a problem and is almost certain to be a net loss for conservation.
The endgame of the professional environmentalists is obviously the same as it has been for 30+ years: to approximate as closely as possible the 9.5 million acre Red Rock Wilderness Act. They can’t do it legislatively, but reckon if they can get every Democratic POTUS to designate a monument of a million or two acres at a time, they’ll eventually get there. It looks to me like Colorado has a total of around 440,000 acres designated national monument. When you’re talking parks and monuments in southern Utah, 440,000 acres is a rounding error. 8% of SJC is private property. 8%.
Does all this count as abuse of the AA? I don’t know, but I do know it’s not fair to characterize -all- opposition to the proclamation of massive monuments as unprincipled or merely partisan. Some of us have defensible reasons to think it was bad policy and worse politics.
The BW article above is far from the worst I’ve read on the topic, but I’ve only read one that I would actually recommend:
https://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2016/12/05/bears-ears-chronicles-a-public-lands-history-the-future-by-jim-stiles/
Compromise. Remember conservatives&libertarians are still bitter towards Democrats about Obamacare. You libs REALLY cooked the friendship when you rammed that one down thePeoples throat, when your idea of `compromise’ was Republican capitulation. TheDems held majorities in both chambers of Congress, held the executive-branch, & had leverage in the Judiciary & nakedly threw it down that “we won, so .. stick it”. Perfunctorily, they went thru some motion of asking Repubs for suggestions & comments about the pending-bill, then >>autocratically & arrogantly<< snooted at
Repub unwillingness to “”compromise””. TheDem’s Compromise was for theRepubs to
round-file their proposals & unconditionally surrender to Dem socialist machinations.
At the time, improbitent Dems were snidely muttering to their Repub inferiors
“Did you say something?”
That feature was when the worm-began-to-turn against obummunism. Elections since in '010, '012(except for vote-fraud that unconscionably re-elected ThePoser), '014, & last 8Nov have pointed leftwingers are doing something recognized as profoundly wrong. Perhaps like Barry said in '014, you just need to become even MORE shrill & breathlessly-desperate in getting your message out!!!
In-the-meantime, maybe 1.35million acres is too big & maybe you could show contrition & regret for Obama overreach … by compromising. Maybe instead of the purported $45million a trade-show generates, more wealth-generation is possible for all Utahans w/ a more business-friendly arrangement. Yes, vigilance most be kept but businessmen have families too & they DO comprehend the essential of ecology & enviro protection.
That the OIA and its oligarchs only speak of business and not preservation speaks volumes of their economic blackmail without environmental conviction.
That recreationists overlook the cumulative environmental impacts of their individual pursuits and celebrate the ‘courage’ of Chouinard, Metcalf and the OIA’s unprincipled Utah boycott is telling of the hypocritical state of neoliberal environmentalism and its role in wrecking the planet.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/23/open-letter-to-neoliberal-environmentalists/