The Utah Issue

BY ETHAN AUMACK

In the spring of 2019, my family and I floated the Escalante River through Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. After nearly a week passing under glorious ochre cliffs, soaring arches, and reawakened cottonwood trees, we reluctantly hoisted our boats onto our backs and stepped away from what truly felt like another world. We had been stunned, transfixed, and overcome. Like so many others who have floated, walked, or simply driven through southern Utah, we were reminded spectacularly that this place is like no other. In this period of uncertainty and disruption caused by the coronavirus, as I work from our kitchen table with our two young daughters nearby, that river float seems all the more otherworldly.

One might assume that Utah’s embarrassment of natural and cultural riches would translate into a common, ambitious vision about how to conserve them. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. For decades, debates about proposed national monuments and wilderness areas, oil and gas (and oil shale, uranium, and potash) development, and overall disposition of state and federal lands have been supercharged. The chasm between conservation proponents and those advocating for development of and extraction from Utah’s land and waters yawns wide.

In this space, the Grand Canyon Trust has worked in Utah for nearly three decades. We have, with supporters and partners, devoted our heart and soul, intellect and muscle to the stewarding and protecting of cherished landscapes — and the spaces between — in a part of the world where the stakes couldn’t be higher. We have done so holding firm when needed, and extending a hand toward collaboration when possible.

In this issue of the Advocate, we tell just a few stories of our work. This issue rolls off the presses in a time of anxiety and hardship that we could never have foreseen when the authors sat down to pen these pieces over the winter. However, the triumphs and setbacks chronicled here also speak to the Grand Canyon Trust's enduring commitment to continue working to safeguard these essential landscapes and support the rights of Indigenous communities, in this time of crisis and far beyond. In these pages, John Leshy describes an innovative collaboration spearheaded by the Trust that has protected the heart of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument from livestock overgrazing for 20 years — and that is now at risk of being undone in the next year. Tim Peterson tells the story of holding the line at Bears Ears National Monument, while collaborating with the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition to see the original vision of the monument realized. Mike Popejoy, Lisa Winters, and Mary O’Brien tell the stories of “in-between” places like Johnson Lakes Canyon and Monroe Mountain, that are worthy of our deepest care and concern, and of the attorneys, acre-by-acre diehard restoration practitioners, Forest Service district rangers, community organizers, and others — who make conservation their life’s work.

These places matter, and even as we encourage our members and supporters to avoid non-essential travel to avoid straining local healthcare systems in this critical time, we also know that these places endure. We are working to protect them so that they will be there to provide you with sustenance, joy, healing, and beauty when this present moment passes.

If, as it seems, conservation in Utah exists at the intersection of beauty, conflict, and hope, long-time trustee and Utah resident Steve Snow’s interview encourages us to stand tall in this vital space, while striving to translate a common love for this place into broadly supported conservation. It's a message that resonates, especially in our current moment — a moment that will test our collective resolve. 

From home offices and kitchen tables across Utah and the Colorado Plateau, we are thinking of you with care and concern. You are a member of our Grand Canyon Trust family, and we wish you well as you care for yourself, your family, and your community.

Thank you for your steadfast support,

Ethan Aumack