Trump dismantling our National Monuments

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

We shouldn’t expect a big transformation at Bears Ears, at least initially. Created in the waning days of the Obama administration, all changes were put on hold pending Secretary Zinke’s review. The Bureau of Land Management manages the land and its footprint has always been light: until last year only one full-time law enforcement ranger oversaw the massive acreage, which descends from the pine forests and high meadows of Elk Ridge and the Bears Ears, twin buttes held sacred by local tribes, through fissured sandstone canyon systems and piñon-juniper desert notched with bladed ridges and packed with ancestral Pueblo artifacts....

THREATS FACING BEARS EARS

The biggest threat to Bears Ears in the immediate future, says Ewing, is visiting tourists. For many years, the area’s very remoteness protected its rich archeology. There are more than 100,000 ancestral Puebloan sites—cliff dwellings tucked into mineral-streaked sandstone alcoves, kivas, great houses, room blocks, ancient roads—encompassing millions of potsherds, petroglyphs, textiles, animal and human remains, sandals, grinding stones, 800-year-old corn cobs. But the era of geotagging and image searches has altered that balance: “What the Internet did was take the images and the beauty and incredible archaeology and put it out there for people,” Ewing says.

His organization estimates that visits to the area tripled between 2005 and 2015, doubled again in 2016, and doubled yet again in the first half of 2017, as the battle over the monument put Bears Ears in the news. As visitation has risen, so has the damage: tourists pocketing potsherds, campers using century-old Navajo hogans for firewood; graffiti on ancient rock panels; all-terrain vehicles blasting through ancestral burial grounds.

“The strategy of leaving it alone and trying to keep it a secret is an unsustainable option for protecting the land,” says Ewing.

Local opponents of the monument also agree that visitation is a problem. “I don’t think you’ll talk to anyone in San Juan County who believes it doesn’t need more protection,” says Nicole Perkins, a librarian in the gateway town of Blanding who has helped lead local opposition to the monument.