Outdoor rec industry energized by Trump move
President Donald Trump’s downsizing of two massive national monuments in Utah sparked a furious backlash from American Indians, conservation groups and the outdoor industry, which moors its future in public lands.
“I don’t think it is controversial, actually,” Trump said Monday in his announcement of monument reductions in Utah’s capitol, where thousands of protesters marched in opposition. “I think it’s so sensible.”
Trump, obviously, hasn’t been listening to the outdoor recreation industry. From the federal government, that’s nothing new. The industry has long lingered in the background when it comes to policy impacting public lands, typically taking a backseat to oil and gas, mining, grazing and timber industries. But over the past year, as Trump weighed the reduction of Utah’s 1.4 million-acre Bears Ears and 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-escalante national monuments, the outdoor recreation industry has galvanized, using its growing clout to try to shift the president and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke away from what it called an attack on public lands.
The industry yanked its twice-a-year Outdoor Retailer trade shows out of Salt Lake City — lucrative gatherings that not only swelled city coffers but lured dozens of outdoor businesses to set up shop in Utah — citing the state’s push to reduce federal land protections.
Colorado, touting its embrace of public lands, landed the now thrice-a-year trade shows, and outdoor leaders here are championing the gatherings as an
opportunity to bolster the state’s recreation industry. Industry captains such as Patagonia, The North Face and REI followed the move to Colorado with aggressive advertising campaigns, urging opposition to the Utah monument downscaling.
Even though Trump ignored the outdoor industry’s proverbial line in the sand and slashed about 2 million acres from the two Utah national monuments, outdoor recreation businesses are hardly wallowing in defeat.
Patagonia joined a coalition that filed a lawsuit against Trump on Wednesday, arguing in a 72-page complaint that the clawback of President Barack Obama’s December 2016 designation of Bears Ears violates federal law.
“The Antiquities Act only empowers the president to declare national monuments and does not delegate authority to the president to revoke, abolish, diminish or replace them,” reads the lawsuit, filed by eight groups, including archaeologists, paleontologists, conservationists, historic preservationists and outdoor recreation companies.
Other groups — including conservation and access organizations as well as American Indian tribes — have filed lawsuits seeking to block the monument resizing.
Outdoor businesses have joined conservation groups and American Indian tribes in a flurry of vocal, legal challenges to the downsizing. More than 1,000 outdoor business leaders on Tuesday sent letters to Congress protesting Trump’s move on Bears Ears and Grand Staircaseescalante, which was designated a monument by President Bill Clinton in 1996.
“We’ve fought to protect these places since we were founded, and now we’ll continue that fight in the courts,” Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario said in a statement.
Amy Roberts, the head of Boulder’s Outdoor Industry Association, which spearheaded the trade show’s move from Utah to Denver, said it is evident that the administration was unprepared for the backlash.“they underestimated how people feel about their public lands.”
Roberts thinks Trump didn’t have the right information when he signed off on the monument reduction. Since he campaigned on a promise to revive rural economies, Roberts said, he must not have seen the Headwaters Economics study showing the 1.9 million acre Grand Staircaseescalante National Monument between 2001 and 2015 spurred population growth of 13 percent around the region while personal income grew 32 percent and jobs grew by 24 percent.
Maybe, Roberts said, Trump missed this key data: the 2.8 million comments submitted during Zinke’s review of 27 national monuments, a vast majority of which supported current monument designations; and the OIA report showing Americans spending $887 billion on outdoor gear and travel, supporting 7.6 million jobs and $125 billion in federal, state and local taxes.
“If Trump is serious about improving the economic opportunities in rural areas for rural Americans, the Grand Staircaseescalante study proves what is possible with outdoor recreation and now he’s taken an action that could be very harmful to that area,” Roberts said. “My sense is that Zinke did not give him the full picture and I would say this is a miscalculation on their part.”
Zinke on Tuesday held a news conference where he announced his final report, which also seeks unspecified reductions for two other national monuments — Cascade-siskiyou in Oregon and Gold Butte in Nevada — as well as changes in the management for six other land and marine monuments. He dedicated considerable time to defending the sweeping overhauls of Utah’s monuments.
This isn’t a reduction of protections to welcome more cattle grazing, oil and gas drilling or a new mine on the public lands, he said.
His review of 27 national monuments and the reductions in Utah were about an adherence to the 1906 Antiquities Act, which allows presidents to create national monuments by designating “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” The Antiquities Act has been “abused” by previous administrations, Zinke said, identifying dubious objects for protection, such as “stars, biological diversity, remoteness, emptiness.”
Zinke noted how presidents have reduced the size of monuments 18 times over the years. And he took umbrage at the outdoor industry’s fervent opposition, highlighted by Patagonia converting its homepage to all black, with the words “The President Stole Your Land.”
“Patagonia made in China?” Zinke said. “This is an example of a special interest. What 1 square inch was stolen? The federal estate remains intact. We restored national forest to a national forest, restored a wilderness study area to a wilderness study area in Bears Ears. Bears Ears remains larger than Zion and Bryce (Canyon national parks) combined. The argument that somehow President Trump stole land is nefarious, false and a lie.”
Roberts said that Zinke’s statements felt like damage control — another sign that he and Trump were unprepared for the rage erupting from the Utah monument decision.
“I think they are feeling the heat from a large, bipartisan segment of Americans,” she said.
The economic impact of Outdoor Retailer’s departure from Utah after more than 20 years has yet to be realized. But the impacts and influence of the outdoor recreation industry’s newly roused political muscle will be felt, leaders say. .
“January will come to Salt Lake City, and there will be a level of awareness that this really hurts the average business in town. That awareness hasn’t come full circle yet,” said Luis Benitez, the head of Colorado’s Outdoor Recreation Industry Office, who was instrumental in bringing Outdoor Retailer to Denver.
Benitez hopes to use the Outdoor Retailer trade shows in January, July and November as an opportunity for the outdoor industry to nurture an inclusive agenda that will further protect public lands.