{"id":66223,"date":"2020-02-07T19:00:50","date_gmt":"2020-02-08T02:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/u-s-plans-to-open-millions-of-acres-of-public-land-to-drilling-cattle\/"},"modified":"2020-02-08T02:00:50","modified_gmt":"2020-02-08T02:00:50","slug":"u-s-plans-to-open-millions-of-acres-of-public-land-to-drilling-cattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/u-s-plans-to-open-millions-of-acres-of-public-land-to-drilling-cattle\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. plans to open millions of acres of public land to drilling, cattle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The \u201cMoonhouse\u201d is in McLoyd Canyon, near Blanding, Utah. The U.S. government is unveiling its management plan for the Bears Ears National Monument on tribal lands that are home to ancient cliff dwellings and other artifacts in Utah.<\/span>Associated Press file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The push for oil and gas development on Western public lands picked up momentum Thursday despite opposition from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Colorado conservation organizations and Colorado politicians such as Gov. Jared Polis.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s administration announced final plans Thursday to allow cattle grazing, mining, oil drilling and other development across a section of southeast Utah previously protected as national monuments.<\/p>\n

With the plans, millions of acres of land that contain cultural artifacts, rock art and fossils are at risk.<\/p>\n

But Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, said the land in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante doesn\u2019t have a significant amount of oil and natural gas. In fact, the oil and gas industry has been \u201clargely unscathed by national monument designations,\u201d Sgamma told The Durango Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Western Energy Alliance\u2019s only concern is that a future \u201ckeep it in the ground president\u201d would use the Antiquities Act to protect the land, Sgamma said. The Antiquities Act classifies archaeological sites on public land as important public resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is hard to argue that a president can make national monuments with the wave of a wand\u201d but can\u2019t adjust the borders, Sgamma said.<\/p>\n

Ranchers losing land<\/div>\n

For local ranchers like James Snyder, opening up the public land for cattle grazing would keep the industry alive for new generations of ranchers. When private ground in the West is parceled into housing developments and subdivisions, the cost of grazing land increases. Some Colorado ranchers graze their cattle in neighboring Utah.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith ranching, you can\u2019t afford to pay that much, and BLM ground wasn\u2019t pieced up like the rest of it,\u201d Snyder toldthe <\/em>Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In Cortez, young farmers say there is no point in trying to raise cattle on land their family has worked for generations, Snyder said.<\/p>\n

Older farmers can sell the land for to developers and retire comfortably.<\/p>\n

\u201cLots of people want to live here, and I don\u2019t blame them. This is some of the best places in the world to live,\u201d Snyder said.<\/p>\n

Voices of the tribes ignored<\/div>\n

Trump cut the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in 2017. The 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears monument was divided into two monuments, Shash Jaa and Indian Creek, totaling 201,876 acres. Grand Staircase-Escalante was reduced from 1.8 million acres to 1 million acres and broken into three areas.<\/p>\n

Shaun Chapoose, a representative for the Ute Indian Tribe and co-chairperson for the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition, said in a statement that the Trump administration is \u201cfailing in its treaty and trust responsibilities to Indian tribes\u201d by eliminating protections for \u201cthousands of priceless and significant cultural, natural and sacred objects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharon Buccino, senior director for lands at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called it \u201cthe latest in a series of insults to these magnificent lands by the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe stand with the five tribes and the millions of Americans who vigorously oppose this degradation and giveaway of our public lands, and we will continue to challenge the unlawful dismantling of these Utah treasures in court,\u201d Buccino said.<\/p>\n

Environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and a coalition of Native American tribes sued the Trump administration over the reductions, and the decision is pending in federal court.<\/p>\n

Implementation unlikely<\/div>\n

Peter Ortego, attorney for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, said the Trump administration did not have the legal right to release these plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI anticipate a lot of challenges,\u201d Ortego said, since the Trump administration\u2019s plans will have to go through various courts before they are implemented, and Ortego believes the tribes will be successful in their lawsuit to redesignate the lands as national monuments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Utes have occupied that area for time eternal,\u201d and for the Trump administration to move forward developing the land without their involvement is \u201can affront to human dignity, as far as I\u2019m concerned,\u201d Ortego told the Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we don\u2019t work together, it delays the resolution of issues, and no one really wins,\u201d Ortego said.<\/p>\n

Emily Hayes is a graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

public land clash with Ute Mountain Utes and Colorado conservation groups<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,13,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-66223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66223"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=66223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}