The Colorado River at Dead Horse Point, Utah                                                                         (Mike Painter)

August 3, 2015

Dear CalUWild friends –

Preparation of the July Update spilled over into August. Sorry for the delay!

Last month, Pres. Obama designated three new national monuments: Berryessa Snow Mountain in California (Item 3), Basin and Range in Nevada (Item 5), and Waco Mammoth in Texas. These bring to 19 the number of monuments created or expanded by Mr. Obama. Since the Waco Mammoth Monument is outside CalUWild’s geographical focus, I won’t say too much about it beyond the fact that it contains significant fossil finds, including a “nursery herd” of mammoths, young ones and females, buried by mud in a natural disaster and thus preserved. Fossils of other mammoths and other species have also been unearthed there. The presidential proclamation gives more details, and if you’re interested, please read it. (Links to the other two proclamations are included below.) The White House posted an announcement about the three designations on its website, which you may read here.

Please thank the president for his continued use of the Antiquities Act by designating these three new monuments. Contact information is below.

There are quite a number of other Action Items, so I won’t say much more than to wish you a good summer and hope you can get out sometime soon to enjoy our wild areas and public lands. Thanks for your continued support and interest!

Best wishes,
Mike

IN UTAH
1.   Bears Ears Protection Campaign Gathers Steam
          (ACTION ITEM)
2.   Arches and Canyonlands National Parks Undertake Traffic Planning
          (ACTION ITEM)

IN CALIFORNIA
3.   Pres. Obama Designates Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument
          (ACTION ITEM)
4.   Castaic Wilderness Bill Introduced
          (ACTION ITEM)

IN NEVADA
5.   Pres. Obama Designates Basin and Range National Monument
          (ACTION ITEM)

IN GENERAL
6.   Job Listings
          a.   Bodie Hills Conservation Partnership, Director
          b.   Defenders of Wildlife, California Program Associate

IN THE PRESS & ELSEWHERE
7.   Links to Articles and Other Items of Interest

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

IN UTAH
1.   Bears Ears Protection Campaign Gathers Steam
          (ACTION ITEM)

For the last several years, CalUWild has been part of a coalition of organizations, including the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Sierra Club, and the Grand Canyon Trust, proposing that the area surrounding Canyonlands National Park be protected as a national monument. The Administration has definitely taken note of our efforts. More recently, a campaign has become public, initiated by Native American tribes to secure protection for the areas surrounding the Bears Ears (near Natural Bridges National Monument) and Cedar Mesa. The area contains a very dense concentration of archaeological sites. It is considered the ancestral home of many of the present-day Pueblo tribes in the Southwest and is sacred to other tribes, including the Navajo, Ute Mountain Utes, and Hualapai.

The Bears Ears proposal covers approximately 1.9 million acres. As you can see by comparing a map of the Bears Ears proposal with one of the Greater Canyonlands proposal, there is substantial overlap between the two-the south and eastern portions of the Canyonlands proposal are included in the Bears Ears.

The Bears Ears campaign hopes that Congress will create a National Conservation Area legislatively, but if that doesn’t happen, that Pres. Obama will use his authority under the Antiquities Act to designate a National Monument, as he has been recently inclined to use. An intertribal meeting was held last month at the Bears Ears, which administration and local land mangers attended. The proposal was discussed, and the government officials had an opportunity to see the landscape for themselves and meet with tribal leaders and members face to face.

However, the meeting immediately aroused suspicion and opposition in San Juan County, where the proposed area is located. People are claiming it’s a federal land grab, that the local population should have the final say in the land’s management, and that the locals have been good stewards of the area. This is, in other words, the same reaction heard always when land protection proposal are put forth.

It remains to be seen what steps the Administration will take with respect to Southern Utah. The President will most likely wait to see the outcome of Rep. Rob Bishop’s Public Lands Initiative, which is progressing slowly at this point, and would look at the merits of the Greater Canyonlands proposal compared to the Bears Ears. At this point anything is possible.

We’ll keep you posted.

Indian Country Today Media had an article discussing the proposal. It contains a YouTube video from an Ecoflight flight over the area, offering an interesting aerial perspective of the area. Utah TV station KSL ran a segment on the proposal, posted online with the somewhat sensationalist headline: “Does secret meeting mean feds are plotting new Utah national monument?” You can watch the segment or read the balanced-despite-the-headline article accompanying it here.

Jerry Spangler, an archaeologist and executive director of the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance, wrote an op-ed in the Deseret News arguing in general for a monument in Utah’s Canyon Country.

The Bears Ears Coalition has an online petition asking Congress and President Obama to protect the area. Please sign it by following the Take Action link on their homepage.

2.   Arches & Canyonlands National Parks Undertake Traffic Planning
          DEADLINE: August 19
          (ACTION ITEM)

The following article regarding traffic problems in Arches and Canyonlands national parks appeared recently in National Parks Traveler. If you have suggestions you’d like the Park Service to consider, please submit them. Please mention your own experience in either park, if any. Follow the links in the article.

If you’ve ever visited Canyonlands and Arches national parks in southeastern Utah during the busy season, you know that finding a parking spot near the key geologic attractions can be difficult at times. So how would you solve the congestion problems?

Earlier this year the National Park Service started a project in Arches to expand the parking area at the Delicate Arch trailhead to help solve part of the problem. But now the agency wants to take a broader approach to parking and traffic issues in the two parks.

The Park Service is now seeking public input on possible solutions to the parking crunch.

During peak season, all major parking areas in the parks are at or over capacity several hours a day. When this occurs, visitors park their cars along roadsides for long distances and walk in traffic to their destination, while stopped cars waiting for spaces to become available at parking lots impede traffic flow. As a result, visitor safety is compromised, conflicts arise between visitors, roadside vegetation is damaged, and the positive visitor experience is diminished.

The purpose of the Traffic Congestion Management Plan is to explore ideas and identify solutions to solve these crowding problems. The overall goal of the plan is to protect and enhance the current and future visitor experience in the parks while protecting park resources and values.

In January 2015, the Park Service held an open house to seek feedback from the public on various congestion management strategies for Arches National Park, and comments received offered a variety of possible solutions to managing congestion in the park. The NPS is now beginning the compliance process to further examine those solutions as part of a Traffic Congestion Management Plan and Environmental Assessment for both Arches and Canyonlands national parks. The suggested solutions are described, along with some of the pros and cons of implementing each solution, in the public scoping newsletter. [Link below]

Individuals wishing to participate are asked to submit comments on the NPS Planning, Environment, and Public Comment (PEPC) website at:

Deadline for comments submitted via these websites is August 19.

Scoping Letter (downloads automatically when link is clicked)

____________________

Last week, Canyonlands National Park also announced day-use permit requirements and limits for vehicles and bikes for the White Rim Road in the Island in the Sky and for Elephant Hill in the Needles, beginning September 1, 2015. More details may be found on the Park’s website here.

IN CALIFORNIA
3.   Pres. Obama Designates Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument
          (ACTION ITEM)

As mentioned in the introduction, Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, in the Inner Coast Range north of San Francisco was designated July 10. We’ve written about the area and the campaign before, so I won’t go over the details now, but if you want a refresher, you can read more here:

A map of the new monument may be found here. (Cache Creek Wilderness is in the heart of the monument and is the site of the Rocky Fire, now the largest wildfire in Northern California. There’s a map with current fire information here.)

You may read Pres. Obama’s proclamation here.

Many thanks go to Tuleyome and the California Wilderness Coalition for their tireless efforts over many years, leading the coalition of organizations supporting the proposal. It’s a victory for them and all of us!

Please thank Pres. Obama for the designation (as well as for the other two).

Rep. Mike Thompson has been a strong supporter of the monument though legislation in Congress, as have been Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. I’m sure they would appreciate hearing a quick word of thanks, too. Click on their names for contact information.

4.   Castaic Wilderness Bill Introduced
          (ACTION ITEM)

California Rep. Steven Knight (R-25) last month introduced a bill that includes wilderness designation for approximately 70,000 acres of the Angeles National Forest, near Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles. The bill, H.R. 3153, also would create the St. Francis Dam Disaster National Memorial, commemorating the dam disaster in 1928 that killed more than 400 people.

Smithsonian Magazine ran an article on the disaster in March 2015, which you can read online here. Wikipedia has an entry on the dam and the disaster, as well.

CalUWild friend Dianne Erskine-Hellrigel of Santa Clarita, Executive Director of the Community Hiking Club there, led the local campaign to protect the Castaic Wilderness, which was also supported by the California Wilderness Coalition. Many animal species inhabit the area, including the California condor, the arroyo toad, and the California red-legged frog. Additionally, the area contains Native American sites and artifacts, including petroglyphs and grinding rocks.

The Santa Clarita Valley Signal ran an article, including quotes from Ms. Erskine-Hellrigel.

There is some talk that off-road vehicle groups are lining up against the bill, so it’s very important for wilderness friends to say thank you to Rep. Knight and encourage him to keep the wilderness provisions in his bill.

IN NEVADA
5.   Pres. Obama Designates Basin and Range National Monument
          (ACTION ITEM)

As part of his “triple play” last month, Pres. Obama designated the Basin and range National Monument in Southern Nevada, covering approximately 704,000 acres. It also surrounds one of the country’s largest “earth art” installations, City. Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who is retiring next year, and local Rep. Dina Titus (D-1) supported the designation.

Friends of Nevada Wilderness had this to say about the monument:

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) had this to say about the monument:

(He had been asked about 4,000-year-old petroglyphs in the monument. [Greenwire, “Obama designations place Antiquities Act in GOP crosshairs,” July 10, 2015])

You may read Pres. Obama’s monument proclamation here.

The New York Times had an article looking at artist Michael Heizer and his work.

Please thank Pres Obama, Sen. Reid, and Rep. Titus.

IN GENERAL
6.   Job Listings
          a.   Bodie Hills Conservation Partnership, Director

After two years leading the Bodie Hills Conservation Partnership, of which CalUWild is a member, Director Jeff Hunter will be pursuing new adventures and opportunities. During his tenure the Partnership has:

In the coming months, a search will be undertaken to find a successor and continue to make a positive impact for the wildlife, land, and heritage in this special place. If you or anyone you know might be interested in this opportunity, please contact Sam Goldman at the Conservation Lands Foundation.

It’s been a pleasure working with Jeff, and we wish him well!

          b.   Defenders of Wildlife, California Program Associate

Our friends at Defenders of Wildlife sent out the following last week:

California Program Associate
Location: Sacramento, CA
Department: Field Conservation Programs
Supervisor: Director, California Program

BASIC SUMMARY:
This professional-level position is responsible for implementing assigned work plans for the California Program of Defenders of Wildlife. The primary responsibilities include implementation of programs, strategies, campaigns, and projects focusing on strategic plan priorities in California. This position also involves a wide variety of responsibilities supporting the program and operations of the California Program field office. Programmatic and technical assistance will be provided to the Director and other staff members in the California Program. It serves as the Director’s liaison to other staff, federal and state agency personnel, elected officials and their staff, Defenders’ members and the general public. The California Program Associate must possess a general knowledge of all programs and projects within the California Program in order to assist the Director with oversight, implementation of works plans and compliance with procedures and schedules. This position requires substantial discretion in determining how to meet assigned goals and competing deadlines.

For the rest of the announcement, click here.

IN THE PRESS & ELSEWHERE
7.   Links to Articles and Other Items of Interest

If a link is broken or otherwise inaccessible, please send me an email, and I’ll fix it or send you a PDF copy. As always, inclusion of an item in this section does not imply agreement with the viewpoint expressed.

New York Times Articles

More related to diversity

Post on Ted Williams’s FlyRod & Reel blog: Sportsmen Sign Petition, Flood Lawmaker Offices with 174K Letters Opposing Western Land Grab

Op-ed in The Hill: Sportsmen Need the Land and Water Conservation Fund

In Outside Online: Scott Jurek’s Champagne Problems, examining commercialization of wilderness and the fines assessed against a record-setting through-hiker on the Appalachian Trail. Thanks to our friends at Wilderness Watch for bringing the article to our attention.

An article in High Country News: Illegal flights persist despite national park drone ban

An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by CalUWild friend Jacques Leslie: How not to fix California’s water problems

A blog post by our friends at Los Padres Forest Watch about a dam removal project in Los Padres National Forest

Video Links

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