America 
 
 County In Utah Threatens Takeover Of National Park Areas 
 
 i i itoggle caption Wanda Gayle/NPR Wanda Gayle/NPR 
 
 San Juan County has become the fifth county in Utah to declare a state of emergency in response to the closure of National Park areas. 
 
 But the San Juan County Commission has also decided to storm National Park Service barricades, take control of some parks, and reopen them to the public. 
 
 "This is civil disobedience," says Phil Lyman, a CPA and county commissioner from Monticello, Utah, in the southeastern corner of the state. "What's happening to us is wrong." 
 
 The commissioners had decided to take down the barricades at Natural Bridges National Monument as early as Thursday morning but put off that move to give Utah Governor Gary Herbert time to discuss the issue with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. 
 
 "The decision has been made," Lyman adds. "But decisions change." 
 
 San Juan County also includes Hovenweep and Rainbow Bridge National Monuments, the Island in the Sky and Needles Districts of Canyonlands National Park and the Hite Marina inside the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. 
 
 In an emergency meeting Wednesday, the commissioners decided to mobilize Sheriff's deputies, search and rescue volunteers, firefighters, EMT's, portable toilets, garbage trucks and three mobile command centers. 
 
 At least 60 people would be involved, according to Rick Bailey, the county fire marshal. Bailey said the costs of the operation haven't been calculated but he said they're necessary. 
 
 "How do we let local businesses starve to death?" he asked. 
 
 The commissioners indicated in their Wednesday meeting that they are seeking financial assistance from the state of Utah. 
 
 Bailey says 70 percent of the county's businesses depend on visitors to the region's National Parks, Monuments and Recreation Areas, as well as public lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. 
 
 Ninety-one percent of the county is state, federal or Indian reservation land and the county has a history of protesting and resisting federal land management policies. 
 
 The county is also as big as Connecticut and Delaware combined and the National Park areas involved in the planned takeover are hundreds of miles apart. 
 
 Kate Cannon, the regional superintendant of the National Park Service, has been kept informed, the commissioners said in their meeting Wednesday. 
 
 "We have been advised by the Park Service...that it is against the law," Bailey says of the county's plans. "They have not indicated that they would make arrests or stop people." 
 
 Trespassing in a National Park can trigger a citation that is then adjudicated by a Federal Magistrate, who can levy fines of up to $500 and jail terms of up to six months. 
 
 A spokesman for the National Park Service says the agency plans to issue a statement soon. 
 
 "We don't want to threaten or intimidate federal employees," an unidentified commissioner said during a recorded conference call. "We're not strong-arming anybody. We're just getting people into these places." 
 
 This weekend and early next week are usually very busy for federal and state lands in the state because universities and public schools have fall break. 
 
 In their Wednesday meeting, the commissioners said they were prepared to provide or clean toilets, collect garbage, conduct search and rescue operations, staff park entrances and provide law enforcement. They also discussed maximizing media attention and staging photo opportunities. 
 
 They agreed that they would explain their actions by saying "we as a county are trying to do what is in the best interests of the public." 
 
 Gov. Herbert told reporters Wednesday he's also prepared to marshal funding and workers to open other National Park areas in the state. He's asked President Obama to immediately authorize state funding and/or staffing. 
 
 "This is just...common sense," Herbert said. "And frankly we ought to be finding solutions to keep them open rather than saying why they have to be closed." ||||| If only the sandstones could sing, imagine the stories they'd tell, of dinosaurs, mammoth hunters and the "ancient ones" known as the Anasazi. 
 
 All roamed southern Utah over the eons, long before Native Americans struggled to hold their land against Mormon settlers, modern life and now, Donald Trump. 
 
 As the President arrives in Utah Monday afternoon, this rocky corner of the Wild West is a battlefield once again, but this time the warriors will carry briefcases and lawsuits. 
 
 Trump, by signing two presidential proclamations on Monday, shrunk the size of Bears Ears National Monument by more than 80% and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by roughly 45%, fundamentally reshaping the two large national monuments. 
 
 The proclamations split the two national monuments into several smaller sections. Bears Ears will be shrunk from 1.35 million acres to 228,337 acres, according to the spokesperson for Interior, and split into two separate monument sections. Grand Staircase-Escalante, a monument designated by President Bill Clinton, will be split into three sections and shrunk from 1.9 million acres to just about 1 million acres. 
 
 Trump slammed past administrations -- namely Clinton's and President Barack Obama's -- for what he called "federal overreach." The two former Democratic president designated Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante for protection, hoping to preserve their culture, history and natural beauty. 
 
 Past administrations, Trump said, thought "the natural resources of Utah should be controlled by a small handful of very distant bureaucrats located in Washington. And guess what? They are wrong." 
 
 "The families and communities of Utah know and love this land the best and you know the best how to take care of your land," Trump said. "You know how to protect it. And you know best how to conserve this land for many, many generations to come." 
 
 President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore pose at the edge of the Grand Canyon, during the signing of a proclamation establishing Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. 
 
 Locals in the area saw the designations as nothing more than a 3-million-acre federal land grab. The drillers, miners and frackers who were shut out by Clinton's and Obama's use of the Antiquities Ac t would have new leases on life. Sen. Orrin Hatch and his fellow Utah Republicans would have a major victory to celebrate. 
 
 Hoodoos are among the natural wonders in Bears Ears National Monument. 
 
 But those who believe the rocks can talk, through countless fossils, sacred ruins and desert solitude, are bracing for a fight. 
 
 "I'm going to sue him," says Yvon Chouinard, founder and CEO of outdoor gear maker Patagonia. "It seems the only thing this administration understands is lawsuits. I think it's a shame that only 4% of American lands are national parks. Costa Rica's got 10%. Chile will now have way more parks than we have. We need more, not less. This government is evil and I'm not going to sit back and let evil win." 
 
 Chouinard led the effort to move a major outdoor show from Salt Lake City to Denver in protest of Utah's land use politics and he's been a big supporter of the historic coalition of the five local tribes, which put aside ancient rivalries and lobbied for monument protection. 
 
 Outdoor retailer Patagonia also lent its voice in opposition to the move Monday, setting the home page of Patagonia.com to a blacked-out page that says, "The President Stole Your Land," with the option to learn more about "the largest elimination of protected land in American history." 
 
 The site also gave visitors the option to support groups that are pushing back. 
 
 Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said he was unmoved by people like Chouinard who are threatening lawsuits. 
 
 "I don't yield to pressure, only higher principle," he said. "And I don't think public policy should be based on the threat of lawsuit ... I feel very confident." 
 
 San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman says the designation of Bears Ears as a national monument never felt right. 
 
 But Chouinard's arguments carry no sway at a pro-Trump, anti-monument rally in Monticello. Here, Chouinard represents all the liberal interests from outside, conspiring to pit neighbor against neighbor. "What's his net worth? One billion dollars? Two billion?" says San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman. "You got Patagonia in here waving the flag of environmentalism while he's completely exploiting the outdoors for industrialized tourism. For a person in that position to try and lecture morality to one of the poorest counties in the entire nation is wrong." 
 
 There has been opposition to Bears Ears as a monument since it was designated. 
 
 The size of New Jersey, San Juan is the biggest and poorest county in Utah and with this moment of political victory, Lyman finds kinship with the coal miners of Appalachia. 
 
 He points out that Bears Ears is the fifth national park or monument in his county and argues that oil and gas extraction would have less impact on the landscape than the brand of adventure tourism that has transformed nearby Moab. "By designating a monument, you are using a tool that will bring hordes of people to a place that is very sensitive," he says. 
 
 Mark Maryboy walks in Bears Ears, home to generations of his ancestors. 
 
 But according to former county commissioner and Navajo elder Mark Maryboy, cultural sensitivity is hard to find in San Juan County. "They didn't want to work with us," he says. "In fact, one of the county commissioners told me 'You guys lost the war so you have no business talking about the land planning process.'" 
 
 With efficient strides, he drops into a canyon near the San Juan River, past one of the 100,000 sacred ruins in Bears Ears, to a wall covered in 1,200-year old rock art. The spindly renderings of man and animal are the work of an artist they've dubbed "Wolfman" for the paw print signature that accompanies the pictoglyphs. And then he points out the modern bullet holes. 
 
 Ancient rock art is pockmarked by bullet holes. 
 
 To his Navajo faith, this canyon holds the spirits of his loved ones and these carvings are just as sacred as any art in the Vatican or any wall in Jerusalem, yet someone has been using it for target practice. 
 
 "The local white community members are determined to get rid of all the art rock," he says. "It stands in the way of progress for them. It stands in the way of a job. New cars. New clothes. Rolex watch." 
 
 He's heard the argument that his people need jobs and that the extraction industry could provide them while protecting the most important sites. 
 
 Native Americans built grain stores and other structures in what is now southern Utah. 
 
 But, he feels, history hasn't shown that to be true. 
 
 "The experience that Native Americans see in this county is discrimination," he says. "They are the last ones to be hired for any position. Even if there's a huge mining operation opening up, they will not be hired for that position. And they will be exposed to the toxic materials that are left on the ground or in the air." 
 
 Regardless of Trump's decision and unless Utah politicians can figure out a way to take them back and sell them off, the 3 million acres around Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will remain public. 
 
 If you are an American, this is your land and these are your rocks. Pay them a visit sometime. You'll be amazed at the stories they tell. ||||| Monuments 1996: Clinton takes a 1.7 million-acre stand in Utah A Bold Stroke: Clinton takes a 1.7 million-acre stand in Utah 
 
 Diane Sylvain 
 
 Tom Brownold 
 
 At Hartmann/Salt Lake Tribune 1 2 3 
 
 "God's handiwork is everywhere in the natural beauty of the Escalante Canyons and in the Kaiparowits Plateau, in the rock formations that show layer by layer the billions of years of geology, in the fossil record of dinosaurs and other prehistoric life, in the remains of ancient civilizations like the Anasazi Indians. " 
 
 
 
 "In protecting it, we live up to our obligation to preserve our natural heritage. We are saying simply, "Our parents and grandparents saved the Grand Canyon for us; today, we will save the grand Escalante Canyons and the Kaiparowits Plateau of Utah for our children." " 
 
 
 
 * President Bill Clinton, Sept. 18, 1996 
 
 
 
 Though the day starts cool and gray, by noon the sun breaks through the clouds, casting golden rays on some 2,000 people gathered on the south rim of Arizona's Grand Canyon. Environmentalists, Native Americans, government bureaucrats, politicians, scholars and even a few movie stars mingle in the warm September light, excitedly awaiting a pronouncement. 
 
 
 
 As the ceremony begins, a few Hopi elders rise and deliver a blessing: "This is a time of healing," they say. "The healing must begin." 
 
 
 
 Then, with a stroke of his pen, President Clinton signs a document establishing 1.7 million acres in southern Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Thanks to the little-known Antiquities Act of 1906, which grants the president executive powers to designate new monuments, the declaration is final. No Congress, no mind-numbing or raucous public hearings, no mess: "Here Utah, have a monument." 
 
 
 
 The crowd roars its approval, but three men wearing black ribbons on their lapels stand quietly in the back. Perhaps the only time they smile during the ceremony is when the chopping of a helicopter interrupts Utah writer and wilderness advocate Terry Tempest Williams at the precise moment she asks the assembly to "listen to the silence." These three men from Kane County, the home of the new monument, are virtually the only Utah officials present, and they are mad as hell. 
 
 After all, the battle over wilderness has raged for more than a decade here. County commissioners sent bulldozers into proposed wilderness areas one Fourth of July, wilderness supporters have been hung in effigy and environmentalists have decided that compromise and consensus are dirty words. It remains to be seen whether the designated monument will heal Utah's environmental war, or prolong it. 
 
 
 
 Following the announcement at the Grand Canyon, solemn and angry locals in Kanab, Utah, 70 miles to the north, file into the high school gym for their own ceremony. To protest their loss of rights, they wear black arm bands and bear signs reading, "Shame on you Clinton" and "Why Clinton, Why? You're our President." And while environmentalists in Washington, D.C., release festively colored balloons on tethers, schoolchildren in Kanab free 50 black balloons to symbolically warn other states that the president could unilaterally lock away their lands, too. 
 
 
 
 For six years, Kanab, pop. 3,000, has eagerly awaited coal development by Andalex, a Dutch-owned company that would tap into a mother lode of coal - 62 billion tons according to a recent federal analysis - under the remote, grassy Kaiparowits Plateau. The 50-year project was to provide locals with hundreds of decent-paying jobs and billions of dollars in state and local taxes. Now, with one simple proclamation, Clinton had derailed the plan. 
 
 
 
 Utah's mostly Republican congressional delegation, which fought hard to keep the Kaiparowits open to mining, blasted Clinton for steamrolling Westerners. "This is the mother of all land grabs," said Sen. Orrin Hatch. "An outrageous, arrogant approach to public policy," echoed Sen. Bob Bennett. 
 
 
 
 Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah, vowed to cripple the monument by stripping it of funds while state and county officials began crafting a legal challenge to the designation. The outrage wasn't confined to Utah. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, immediately introduced a bill to prevent the president from making a similar designation in his state without full public participation and congressional approval. 
 
 
 
 The monument will not be managed by the National Park Service, but by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which already administers the area and has long-standing relationships with local communities. Grazing, hunting and fishing will still be allowed (see accompanying story). 
 
 
 
 This helps some, but not a lot: "I'd like to see local people involved," said Kane County Commissioner Joe Judd. "I'd like to see taxes for school trust lands (in the monument), and I'd like to see 900 well-paying jobs. But I come across as un-American because the president says this land should be a national monument. Well, the reason this land is so beautiful is because we've been taking care of it for the last 150 years." 
 
 
 
 Before Clinton's announcement, but after rumors had been leaked to the national press, Judd flew back to Washington, D.C., to confront White House officials. "They said they knew nothing about it," he said. "Then the next day we find out it's a done deal and that it's been in the works for four months." 
 
 
 
 Even some environmentalists felt miffed by the administration's secretiveness. "All kinds of people I work with are angry about the process that didn't happen," said Bill Hedden, a Grand County council member who also works for Grand Canyon Trust, the environmental group that helped host the ceremony. 
 
 
 
 And while newspapers on either coast ran glowing editorials about the plan, most Utah papers - even the generally pro-environment Salt Lake Tribune - took positions decrying the lack of public participation, if not the plan itself. 
 
 
 
 From defense to offense 
 
 
 
 Behind the anger, some Utahns were searching their souls. How had control over public land management been so easily wrested from their hands? And would the new monument divide or unite the state in its future struggles over wilderness designation? 
 
 
 
 Less than a year ago, the state's political leaders seemed on the verge of resolving the struggle over Utah's unprotected wild lands once and for all. They passed legislation based on county recommendations that would have designated as wilderness approximately 1.8 million acres of land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (HCN, 12/25/95). The rest would have been thrown open to development, including large portions of the Kaiparowits Plateau. 
 
 
 
 Environmentalists complained bitterly about the delegation's bill - they were pushing for 5.7 million acres of BLM wilderness - and the process, which they said gave too much influence to rural counties and ignored pro-environmental sentiments in Utah's densely-populated Wasatch Front. 
 
 
 
 Led by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, environmentalists nationalized the debate, calling on people across the country to stand up for Utah's magnificent wild lands, to pressure their members of Congress to defeat the Utah delegation's wilderness bill. It worked. Last December, opposition within the House of Representatives forced Hansen to pull his bill before a vote. 
 
 
 
 The defeat created a political vacuum, and into it stepped the Clinton administration. One anonymous White House official says administration staffers had been on the lookout for environmental victories they could achieve without congressional support. They'd considered making Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a monument, but decided that the president could use his veto powers to stop destructive oil drilling in the refuge, so they targeted Utah instead. A team from the Department of the Interior, including Interior Solicitor John Leshy, and some outsiders, was asked to work out the details. 
 
 
 
 Administration officials involved realized the designation was a stroke of political genius. It would resonate well with a public irritated at Republican efforts to roll back environmental laws and regulations; it would shore up the president's green credentials; and it wouldn't affect Clinton's prospects in Utah, where he had finished third behind Ross Perot in 1992. Some say Clinton also got swept away by enthusiasm after announcing a month earlier that the administration would halt a gold mine near Yellowstone National Park. "It's fun to be president; let's do some more of this," he reportedly told a nearby staffer at the park ceremony. 
 
 
 
 But it seems that even the administration was caught a little off-guard. Officials were still crafting the monument proposal when reporter Frank Clifford of the Los Angeles Times broke news of it. Then it appeared in the Washington Post, and the White House decided it could wait no longer. 
 
 
 
 Already, officials were inundated with pleas from both sides. Utah's delegation begged the president's staff to back off and let Utahns decide the fate of the wildest country left in the lower 48 states. They told Clinton that Utah's schoolchildren would suffer if Andalex couldn't develop and pay fees on 200,000 acres of school trust lands scattered throughout the proposed monument. Finally, they resorted to name-calling in the media: They said the president was a midnight land-grabber seeking to burnish his image just weeks before the November election. Some even charged that environmentalists cozy with the administration had crafted the proposal. 
 
 
 
 Utah environmentalists denied the allegation and said the Utah congressional delegation itself had set the stage for Clinton's decision. 
 
 
 
 "The stars were aligned," said an exultant Ken Rait of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "The backdrop was created by the arrogance of the Utah delegation which snubbed much of its constituency. It pushed a wilderness bill that tried to bring down the spirit and intent of the wilderness act, (and that) put Utah public lands on the national map." 
 
 
 
 Added the Grand Canyon Trust's Hedden: "The creation of the monument was a reaction to the fact that we are so polarized in this state that we can't communicate at all with each other. We have failed to come up with a solution on our own, so basically we took ourselves out of the debate." 
 
 
 
 What happens now? 
 
 
 
 Will Utahns hold a permanent grudge or will they sit down together to craft an agreeable management plan for the monument? 
 
 
 
 So far, cooperation seems unlikely. Kane County Commissioner Judd says his county will now back away from an expected agreement with state and federal agencies to reintroduce California condors to the area. "We're not going to sign it now," said Judd. "If one of those condors sits its butt in the monument, why, then, we've got an endangered species problem." 
 
 
 
 "We're going to be a whole lot less cooperative with the federal government," echoes Kane County's attorney Colin Winchester. "I know it's playground stuff - you know, my daddy's bigger than yours - but that's the way we feel now." 
 
 
 
 Others believe that the president's move will ultimately be seen as a watershed leading to more peaceful resolutions of public land issues. Writer Terry Tempest Williams says she believes many Utahns support the monument. "To hear what's going on in the papers, you'd think Utah is in a wake," she said. "But my family is Republican and they're absolutely thrilled. This is one important step toward a growing conservation ethic that we are seeing in Utah. I think things will calm down and the hard work will begin." 
 
 
 
 Pollsters at the Salt Lake Tribune are waiting for the anger to subside before trying to find out what Utahns really think. The Deseret News, however, released an early poll showing 49 percent opposed to the monument and 29 percent for it; 61 percent said the process used to create it was unfair. 
 
 
 
 Beyond the immediate question of the monument lurks the larger question of how much additional public land in Utah should be designated wilderness. Some environmentalists fear the monument will be the extent of it for a long, long time. Others say it strengthens their hand. Says Tempest Williams, "I view (the monument) as a down payment." 
 
 
 
 One precedent for such a view is Alaska. Following President Jimmy Carter's designation of some 56 million acres of national monuments there in 1978, Alaska's congressional delegation began holding serious talks with industry leaders and environmentalists about which lands warranted protection and which could be exploited for resources. The result: the 1980 Alaska Lands Act, the largest and perhaps most remarkable piece of public-lands legislation in the last century. 
 
 
 
 Optimists might also take heart from a marquee outside a roadside business in Kanab. Clinton is clearly a villain, but the monument could be something locals warm to. "Shame on you Clinton," read the sign. Then below: "Buses welcome." 
 
 
 
 Paul Larmer is HCN's associate editor. HCN's assistant editor Elizabeth Manning contributed to this story. 
 
 The following sidebar articles accompany this feature story: 
 
 - The mother of all land grabs 
 
 - A daunting, beautiful place 
 
 - Managing the monument: The devil is in the details
– A southern Utah county isn't taking the government shutdown lying down: It's threatening to reopen its national parks to breathe life back into the area's struggling economy, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. With help from firefighters, EMTs, and search and rescue volunteers, San Juan County—where 70% of businesses rely on visitors to parks, monuments, and public lands—says it will remove barricades, bring in staff, public toilets, and other resources to operate. "How do we let local businesses starve to death?" the fire marshal asked. One wrinkle: The move is against the law. It will be "civil disobedience" done peacefully, the county commissioner says. "We’re watching one of our prime months fade away from us," he says. "It’s really painful. What's happening to us is wrong." Though the costs of the operation haven't been tallied up, the county, the fifth in Utah to declare a state of emergency due to closures, has appealed to the state for funding, NPR reports, adding that barricades could be down as early as today. It's not clear how the feds will respond, but these trespassers at national parks are now headed to court.