bears ears

Photo Essay: Giving Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante the Protection They Deserve

Photo Essay: Giving Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante the Protection They Deserve

By Derrick Z. Jackson Walls of red, walls of gold. Stratified hillsides exposing 270 million years of Earth formation with ribbons of cocoa, caramel, burned orange, and white. Hoodoo rock formations playing tricks on our minds as massive boulders appear to teeter atop eroded, pencil-thin spires. We walked under natural arches that gloriously framed the […]

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    Barbed Wire and Redrock at Bears Ears National Monument

    Barbed Wire and Redrock at Bears Ears National Monument

    By David Gessner I am sitting near the top of the eastern ear, or rather the eastern earlobe, of Bears Ears, the redock buttes that give our most controversial national monument its name. From up here I can look back on my starting point, the meadow far below and two miles north where a big […]

    Why Native Americans Struggle to Protect Their Sacred Places

    Why Native Americans Struggle to Protect Their Sacred Places

    By Rosalyn R. LaPier Forty years ago the U.S. Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act so that Native Americans could practice their faith freely and that access to their sacred sites would be protected. This came after a 500-year-long history of conquest and coercive conversion to Christianity had forced Native Americans from their […]

    5 Crazy Ways the House Is Pushing Extreme Drilling on Public Lands

    5 Crazy Ways the House Is Pushing Extreme Drilling on Public Lands

    By Katherine Arcement Congress wants us to drill our lands and waters … or else! Some members of Congress are trying to rig the system to use public lands primarily for oil and gas drilling, and they are threatening to silence and punish anyone who objects. Under the Trump administration, public lands are being offered […]

    Trump Administration Sells Oil and Gas Leases Near Utah National Monuments

    Trump Administration Sells Oil and Gas Leases Near Utah National Monuments

    The Interior Department on Tuesday is auctioning off 32 parcels of public lands in southeastern Utah for oil and gas development. The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) lease sale includes more than 51,000 acres of land near Bears Ears—the national monument significantly scaled back by the Trump administration last year—as well as the Hovenweep and […]

    Drilling and Mining Interests Pushed to Shrink Utah National Monuments, Documents Reveal

    Drilling and Mining Interests Pushed to Shrink Utah National Monuments, Documents Reveal

    Even though Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke insisted “this is not about energy,” environmentalists and public lands advocates have long suspected the Trump administration’s cuts to national monuments were driven by its push for more drilling, mining and other development. Now, internal Interior Department documents obtained by the New York Times show that gaining access to […]

    Ryan Zinke Wins 2017 Rubber Dodo Award

    Ryan Zinke Wins 2017 Rubber Dodo Award

    Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke is the winner of the Center for Biological Diversity’s 2017 Rubber Dodo award. The statue is awarded each year to the person or group who has most aggressively sought to destroy America’s natural heritage or drive endangered species extinct. “Ryan Zinke seems to wake up every day wondering how he can […]

    Uranium Mining’s Toxic Legacy: Why the U.S. Risks Repeating Mistakes

    Uranium Mining’s Toxic Legacy: Why the U.S. Risks Repeating Mistakes

    By Stephanie Malin Uranium—the raw material for nuclear power and nuclear weapons—is having a moment in the spotlight. Companies such as Energy Fuels, Inc. have played well-publicized roles in lobbying the Trump administration to reduce federal protection for public lands with uranium deposits. The Defense Department’s Nuclear Posture Review calls for new weapons production to […]