Friday will mark another closed chapter in the effort to protect Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument-- a rugged and remarkable landscape with a vast array of natural and historic resources. The Bureau of Land Management will close the comment period for the plan that calls to reduce the monument’s boundaries by half. The proposal will leave the land vulnerable to extractive industries and could bulldoze the landscape and tear down its trees in a process known as “chaining.” This plan would effectively destroy the landscape’s designation originally meant to “...protect a spectacular array of historical, biological, geological, paleontological, and archaeological objects.”
Gutting Grand Staircase–Escalante would be a travesty to the communities that surround it, would disenfranchise future generations from amazing experiences, and would harm the ecologically distinctive and regionally rare species it contains. Just last week, I spent two days in and around the monument, and the desert experience was truly transformative. I went to Boulder, Utah, to organize a group of community leaders advocating for the protection of Grand Staircase–Escalante to meet with Sierra Club’s executive director, Michael Brune.
To my luck one night a dinner, our group received an unexpected invitation to explore Grand Staircase. So the next day my chapter director and I spontaneously -- and woefully unprepared -- partook on a canyoneering adventure. Canyoneering literally meant we’d be route finding, problem solving, hiking, rappelling, and possibly swimming in the Grand Staircase.
I already knew this place was magical but experiencing it through an exciting medium and with new friends added a layer to my desire to protect this natural wonder. I never thought I would rappel into the depths of millennia-old sandstone so gracefully aged. I love remembering that places resembling the planet Mars existed on Earth, but experiencing and receiving the desert glow for myself was nirvana. It was so scary descending for my first time into a canyon, but not as much as the thought of inflicting irreversible damage and losing places like this forever.
On our last hike, our eyes met sweeping desert vistas and our new friends taught us the names of the mesas, pointed to where they lived, and told us stories about the surrounding communities. Donald Trump’s proclamation is still pending in the courts, but residents certainly already feel the impacts. There’s more cattle and grazing, an uptick in off-road vehicles in unfamiliar areas, and the general sense that the protected landscape feels significantly smaller.
As we walked, locals described their experiences recreating in Grand Staircase–Escalante. “We leave no trace and practice ghosting techniques. We respect this place, so we make sure that we minimize our impacts on the land we love. As we slowly descended ourselves into the curves of the sandstone, we discussed the history, culture, and never-ending adventure that exists within the monument.
The monument is not just a place to visit for many people, it is the surrounding communities' backyard. Now, their lands are being taken over and shrunken to feed the greed of irresponsible extraction. The monument’s gateway communities are warm, thriving, and kind. They beam about their starry night skies and clean air -- something we miss in Salt Lake most days.
I left feeling a conflicted sense of empowerment and sadness. I want everyone, forever, to be able to have the experience I did. We must not let these places become history only in books; we must sustain them physically and in their entirety for all humanity. The community has been able to diversify its economy since the creation of the monument beyond that of tourism. They have increased service jobs and are creating healthy communities with sustainable economies. The monument has deep ties to the Ute, Hopi, Zuni, Navajo, and Paiute Nations and the Mormon religion. The story of Grand Staircase–Escalante is one of success.
April 13 closes another chapter in an attack on public lands but it opens another to take action. Help #SaveGrandStaircase for the protection of the cultural, ecological, paleontological, archaeological, sacred, and recreational resources. I’m feeling refreshed after my experience. Everyone should be able to see places like this at some point in their life. Take action to stop the tearing apart of Grand Staircase–Escalante.
A special thank you to Grand Staircase Escalante Partners for leading our adventure!