by Tim Peterson, Cultural Landscapes Director
Bears Ears is beautiful. Bears Ears is irreplaceable. Bears Ears is home to countless cultural sites that work together to form a living cultural landscape bound across hundreds of generations to contemporary Native American peoples and cultures.
It’s fitting that a place so important to so many people from differing traditions is also the crucible for another historic first — America’s first national monument management plan written in collaboration with Native nations, the five tribes of the Bears Ears Commission (Hopi, Navajo, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni).
Since the Bears Ears National Monument boundaries were restored in 2021, federal land managers and the Bears Ears Commission have been working on a draft alternative for the new management plan and now is your chance to add your voice to the chorus in support of the five tribes’ vision for protecting Bears Ears. You have until June 11, 2024 to submit your comments.
Since the more than 1,200-page draft was released in early March 2024, we’ve been digging into the details, and there’s a lot to like. Some areas of the plan need improvement though, and as you can probably guess, anti-monument and anti-public lands campaigners who oppose protection are making noise too, so we need your help to preserve potential gains that they’re mobilizing to roll back.
Comments aren’t counted like votes for one thing or another, and the overall tally doesn’t carry much weight. To be most effective, your comments must address substantive issues that have already been analyzed in the draft plan, and they should say why you favor the action for which you’re advocating.
The most important points to make in your comments:
Let public lands managers know that you support the five tribal nations of the Bears Ears Commission in their efforts to strengthen Indigenous-led conservation and decision-making for Bears Ears’ future. Overall, urge land managers to adopt their preferred alternative written with the Bears Ears Commission (Alternative E) with improvements, and ask them not to weaken the preferred alternative.
After this comment period, federal officials will review and incorporate public input and release a final plan later this year. Your comments are needed now to ensure that federal land managers from the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service honor their commitments to the five tribes.
Honoring those commitments means safeguarding the Bears Ears cultural landscape by harmonizing protection for ancestral tribal lands with biodiversity and responsible recreation at Bears Ears. If federal land managers cave to the anti-monument voices, we won’t have another chance to fix Bears Ears’ management plan for a generation. Please add your voice in favor of a brighter future for Bears Ears today.
Comment now. The federal government is creating a management plan for Bears Ears National Monument. You have a once-in-a-generation chance to speak up for protecting lands, waters, forests, and cultural resources in Bears Ears. Please edit the form comment and use your own words.
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