Tribal groups join blitz to save ‘sacred lands’
‘Slaughter summit’
SALT LAKE CITY, Aug 24, (AP): Conservation and tribal groups are airing TV ads, sending letters to President Donald Trump and creating parody websites in a last-minute blitz to stop Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke from downsizing or eliminating national monument areas that cover large swaths of land and water from Maine to California.
The deadline for Zinke to announce his recommendations was Thursday following a four-month review of 27 sites ordered by President Trump.
A tribal coalition that pushed for the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, designated by president Barack Obama in December, unveiled a new webpage Tuesday that explains the cultural importance of lands considered sacred to them. They also posted a letter sent to President Trump telling him that part of “making American great again” is honoring tribal history and rights.
“At a time when the United States feels anything but united under the shadow of Charlottesville, Virginia, please hear our voices,” wrote Willie Grayeyes, chairman of the coalition. “These sacred lands have held our song, our stories, and our prayers since time beyond memory, and these lands will continue to hold the promise of our future.” Zinke’s recommendations for the 27 national monument areas under review could eliminate some of them altogether or in some cases shrink them in size by opening them to commercial uses such as mining, grazing of livestock or oil drilling.
The outdoor recreation industry has hammered home its message that peeling back protections on areas where its customers hike, bike and camp could prevent future generations from enjoying the sites.
In addition, the Wilderness Society has created a parody website featuring Trump and Zinke selling luxury real estate at the lands.
Groups that want to see the areas reduced have been less vociferous, pleading their cases on social media and working behind the scenes to lobby federal officials.
They say past presidents have misused a centuryold law to create monument areas that are too large and stop energy development, grazing, mining and other uses.
Trump
Recreation
Stan Summers, a Utah county commissioner who chairs a group that advocates for the multi-use of public lands, said outdoor recreation companies are peddling lies and misconceptions when they say local officials want to bulldoze monument lands.
Summers said residents treasure the lands that comprise Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in Utah, but don’t want to close the areas to new oil drilling and mining that produce good jobs.
“We want to tend this area like a garden instead of a museum,” he said
The review includes sweeping sites mostly in the West that are home to ancient cliff dwellings, towering sequoia trees, deep canyons or ocean habitats roamed by seals, whales and sea turtles.
Zinke has already removed six areas in Montana, Colorado, Idaho and Washington from consideration for changes. He also said Bears Ears on tribal land in Utah should be downsized.
Zinke on Thursday is scheduled to be in his home state of Montana with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue for a briefing on the state’s raging wildfires. No announcement on the fate of the monuments is planned during the visit, said Zinke spokeswoman Heather Swift.
Swollen populations of federally-protected wild horses roaming 10 Western states are starved and damaging rangelands, Utah and US government officials said at a conference Wednesday, an invitationonly meeting that mustang-protection advocates say is promoting the slaughter of an icon of the American West.
Members of Utah’s congressional delegation and a US Interior Department official speaking at the National Horse and Burro Summit in Salt Lake City all described an unsustainable population of wild horses that’s nearly three times the size that federal officials think the rangeland can support.
Horse-protection groups who weren’t allowed into the Utah State University-hosted event protested outside the downtown hotel where it was held, calling it a “slaughter summit” that’s kowtowing to livestock interests, promoting increased roundups and slaughter of wild horses from California to Colorado without public input.
“It’s a collection of politicians and lobbyists for the agriculture industry and the sole purpose is to advance their agenda of slaughtering America’s wild horses,” said Suzanne Roy with the American Wild Horse Campaign.
Terry Messmer, a wildland resources professor at Utah State, defended the conference lineup he said was organized by “a broad coalition of horse advocates — not activist groups, but people who are concerned about the welfare of horses and western rangeland management.”
The meeting comes a week after congressional auditors identified countless hurdles but no solutions to populations of wild horses and burros, including an ever-increasing backlog of captured mustangs already in government corrals costing taxpayers $50 million annually.
Doubled
A report by Congress’ General Accounting Office made public last week noted that the US Bureau of Land Management removed nearly 135,000 horses from the range between 2000 and 2016 but the population on the range doubled and the number of horses in holding facilities increased seven-fold.
The BLM asserts that US rangeland can sustain fewer than 27,000 horses and burros, but there are more than 72,000 wild horses on the rangeland and about 46,000 in holding facilities.
Many horse protection advocates say contraception is the only realistic and humane solution to limit horse populations they feel have more right to roam the range than federally subsidized livestock.
Inside the summit, speakers on Wednesday said it’s cruel to allow unchecked populations of wild horses and burros to starve and compete with other animals for scarce resources.
“There is nothing humane or majestic to see a wild horse starving to death or a wild burro dying of thirst,” said Aurelia Skipwith, deputy assistant US Interior Secretary for fish and wildlife and national parks.