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5PM: We all want pretty much the same thing, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland says after Bears Ears tour
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BLANDING Interior Secretary Deb Haaland stood shoulder to shoulder between Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Sen. Mitt Romney on Thursday while staring out to the Butler Wash Ruins Overlook in the highly disputed Bears Ears National Monument area.
They gazed off at the cliff face, where beneath a shaded arch stood the ruins of cliff dwellings that were built and occupied by Anasazi Indians 700 years ago.
Haaland, the governor, the senator and Utah Rep. Blake Moore chatted privately among themselves, appreciating the history and geological wonders before them. The mood was casual and relaxed throughout the short hike to and from the ruins, as Haaland and her entourage toured one the monument designation areas in Utah that s been the focus of highly contentious debates across now three presidential administrations.
Sec. Haaland visits Bears Ears, but plans only one hour for Grand Staircase-Escalante
She s vowed to listen, but can only spend so much time on the ground.
Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland spent two days this week in San Juan County, touring Bears Ears National Monument as part of her executive-ordered review of the Utah monument for President Joe Biden.
However, besides a 30-minute press conference in Blanding on Thursday, Haaland made none of her meetings with stakeholders fully public and would not release the schedule for her one-hour visit to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument on Friday, according to DOI staff.
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A conservation group sued the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C., federal court on Thursday over 32 Trump-era oil and gas leases in Utah, alleging that the DOI proceeded without properly assessing their impacts on the area’s archaeology and nature including in the nearby Bears Ears National Monument.
Friends of Cedar Mesa, whose staff met Wednesday with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland as she visited the monument’s visitor center, claims in its lawsuit that the DOI has violated the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it auctioned off terrain in 2018 near the monument’s earlier boundaries, before former president Donald Trump scaled them back in 2017.
April 8, 2021 Share
For decades, a public lands tug-of-war has played out over a vast expanse of southern Utah where red rocks reveal petroglyphs and distinctive twin buttes bulge from a grassy valley.
A string of U.S. officials has heard from those who advocate for broadening national monuments to protect the area’s many archaeological and cultural sites, considered sacred to surrounding tribes, and those who fiercely oppose what they see as federal overreach.
On Thursday, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will be the latest cabinet official to visit Bears Ears National Monument and the first Indigenous one.
Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, is scheduled to meet with tribes and elected officials at Bears Ears before submitting a review with recommendations on whether to reverse President Donald Trump’s decision to downsize that site and Grand Staircase-Escalante, another Utah national monument.
BLANDING, Utah Interior Secretary Deb Haaland met with tribal leaders, elected officials and other stakeholders on Thursday as part of a Biden administration review of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, a wide swath of southeastern Utah that has become a symbol in the debate over how to manage public lands.
Haaland said she intended to talk with as many people as possible to determine how best to preserve what she called a very special place, including pictographs she saw while touring the monument. She said she understands the effects the monument struggle has had on people who live nearby and acknowledged that Bears Ears belongs to everybody.