Latest / The Wild Idea / Autumn Gillard & Steve Bloch: Tribal Voices and the Fight to Save Grand Staircase - Escalante

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Autumn Gillard & Steve Bloch: Tribal Voices and the Fight to Save Grand Staircase - Escalante · The Wild Idea

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Welcome to our continuing ongoing conversation for a wild and connected world, what we call the Wild Idea Podcast. Bill Hodge here, along with my friend Anders Reynolds, and we have been leaning into our curiosity about the people, places, and policies that give us our system of wild places in this country of ours, about those connected landscapes, uh, sort of exploring that intersection of wild nature and our own human nature, what we do for those places. Today on the show, we move from our
• 0:35
  East Coast spring break to the deserts of the Southwest and the incredible story of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, where we'll be talking to Autumn Gillard, who is the coordinator for the Grand Staircase Intertribal Coalition, and Steve Block with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. He is their attorney and legal director for the organization. Both have deep roots in the protection for the monument, the management prescription for the monument, and we're excited for that conversation. I'm sure you are as well, Anders.
• 1:08
  Oh, hi, Bill. Yeah, I'm really excited for this one. I know Utah's a landscape we both love. We've both traveled there a lot, although never together.
• 1:19
  Um, but that reminds me, you know, to let people behind the curtain, it, it may seem like you and I are talking for the first time today, but we actually just got off a call with your lovely wife, Laura, in which we were coordinating on booking some travel together, and I am, I'm excited because it looks like you and I are gonna be traveling cross-country together, maybe even, like, right next to each other on the plane.
• 1:42
  Yeah.
• 1:42
  Are you as excited as I am?
• 1:44
  If she didn't get my note about making sure we're not seated together, I'm afraid we might already be seated together [laughs] cross-country to New Orleans for our trip to the Switchback Gathering, yeah. Um, I, I'm excited. I guess I'm a little more reticent than maybe you are. Do you have, do you have plans for that trip? I mean-
• 2:00
  Yeah. I know you're a middle s- I know you're a middle seat guy, so I wanna honor that choice.
• 2:04
  Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. For sure.
• 2:05
  Let me get you on that middle seat.
• 2:06
  Yeah.
• 2:07
  Um, and then I know you're like, you know, you're a little bit of a nervous flyer, so I have been, have been thinking of some ways to distract you. And-
• 2:15
  Huh. You tell.
• 2:15
  Yeah. So there... First of all, I've got... I'm gonna make a little puppet out of the sick bag, like a sock puppet, and I can, like, talk you through takeoff and landing with that thing. You know, I know you respond... Like a child, you respond to, like, black and white sort of shapes moving in front of you.
• 2:31
  [laughs]
• 2:32
  And so I'm gonna do that. And then I was thinking maybe we could... We'll just have, like, some games. Like, I'll do a crossword, and then maybe you and I could play, like, Mash, right? And we could talk about, like, where we're gonna live and who our crushes are-
• 2:45
  [laughs]
• 2:46
  ... and what our occupations are gonna be. And I think all of that will add up to, like, a big distraction. You'll be a little less nervous.
• 2:55
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:56
  Um, and, and failing that, I'm just gonna keep buying you drinks until you fall asleep.
• 3:00
  I picture you as an armrest hog. Is that correct? You just sort of immediately, like, completely flare out the elbows, claim the armrest. Is that the kind of guy you are on a plane?
• 3:10
  No, no, I don't do that, but I do put my leg in the other person's, like, leg well to make sure that they know-
• 3:15
  [laughs]
• 3:15
  ... who the dominant flyer on the row is.
• 3:17
  [laughs] Yeah, I would love, I would love to sit next to you on our way to New Orleans.
• 3:22
  I have a question for you.
• 3:23
  Yeah.
• 3:23
  Are you the kind of person that when the plane lands and you hear that ding that stands up immediately, or do you remain sitting?
• 3:31
  Oh, man, this is, uh, gonna reveal the, um, asshole side of me maybe. I, I do stand up pretty quickly. I am actually an aisle guy, uh, and part of that's because I've got, as you know, I have a sort of bum wheel. My right knee is a mess. And honestly, it's sitting that makes it hurt, and so I'm generally so anxious to stand up that I'm, I'm one of those...
• 3:54
  Uh, and sometimes occasionally I'm also the gate flea. You know what a gate flea is? You know the people that gather-
• 3:59
  Oh
• 3:59
  ... around the gate even though they're boarding in gate five or in group five or whatever. I, I try to avoid that. I try to not be that person, but I,
• 4:07
  I've always just got energy to be standing up, so I don't like sitting around in the, you know, the gate area. I wanna be standing, and then like, yeah, I, I don't know. I guess I'm kind of, I'm kind of that guy. I sometimes, like, stand up soon as the seatbelt sign goes off.
• 4:20
  The gate flea thing is shameful, Bill. That's despicable behavior, but I was unaware there were groups after premium, um-
• 4:26
  [laughs] Of course you aren't. Yeah, you're, you're generally already on the plane having a, uh, martini by the time I'm, um, I'm trying to squeeze by as [laughs] the last few seats, and I see the one middle seat still open in the back. Uh, never was a Southwest guy though. Never have been, and even now that they've gone to assigned seating, like, one, I've never lived in a town that had Southwest at the airport, but-
• 4:47
  But in your defense, I, I would actually say standing up when the ding dings, when the ding dings, is the right mo- We've been sitting down for hours. Why wouldn't you stand up and stretch your...? I think it's odd when people remain seated. Like, they're like, "I... This is the most comfortable chair I've ever been in, and I wanna spend 15 more minutes in it." That's, that's crazy talk. No, the, the standing up is the right decision.
• 5:10
  I mean, I think pre- ... Oh, if you're in the aisle seat, why, why not stand up, right? [laughs] It'd be one thing to be in the window seat and stand up. And to try to redeem myself as an occasional, you know, gate flea and guy that stands up, I've also been known, back in my days when I traveled a lot and I was in the front of the plane, uh, to give up my seat to service members and that kind of thing. So, you know, I want my gold-
• 5:32
  Oh.
• 5:32
  I want my gold star.
• 5:33
  God. Shameless. What shameless pandering.
• 5:37
  [laughs]
• 5:37
  My, my heavens.
• 5:39
  [laughs]
• 5:40
  Unbelievable.
• 5:42
  Oh.
• 5:42
  Let's move on.
• 5:43
  I know you love Southern Utah. I love Southern Utah. Let's go talk to some people who really, really know Southern Utah and talk about the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument with Autumn and Steve. Just such a thrill to have you join us today to talk about one of the wonders of our natural world, a cultural wonder
• 6:02
  The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. But before we talk about the place, I want to know what you bring forth for the work there in Utah. I could read the bios, but that is no substitute of hearing it from you. And so Autumn, I'm gonna put you on the spot and start with you. Autumn, can you share with our audience your journey to the work and the role you serve today when it comes to the monument?
• 6:24
  Sure. Um, well, I am born and raised in Utah. I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, um, for part of my life, and then moved to Southern Utah as a teenager, um, and that was because of my Southern Paiute heritage. Uh, my mother and grandmother were enrolled members of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, part of the Cedar Band of Paiutes. Um, and I had initially, when I had went back to college, was wanting to seek some work in the field of psychology. Um, and had actually started working and interning in public lands, um, at Pipe Spring National Monument, um, that is on the Kaibab Paiute Reservation. And that's where I really started to learn about Grand Staircase, and the significant connection that that ancestral landscape has to Southern Paiute culture and heritage. And I had, you know, one weekend decided to load my car up, travel out to the monument, and touch the land myself, and regain that connection as a Southern Paiute woman. And that's what really brought me to be enveloped in the landscape, and to love it, is, um, really immersing myself there. And, and immediately when I got there, I felt a connection. Um, and I had also started working with Grand Staircase-Escalante partners, um, and had come to learn that they was doing some work, um, to collaborate with the tribes connected to the monument, and had fell into a tribal liaison position there, and got taken out to the monument to some cultural sites that have been severely impacted by vandalism and looting, one of them being the Cut Sheet panel. And the moment that I seen this beautiful panel, um, and what had happened to it, I mean, it, it has cuts all around the bighorn sheep, and it broke my heart, and immediately I thought, "I have to help. What am I gonna do to help?" And, and that's what started my ball rolling there with Grand Staircase.
• 8:29
  What a great journey. Sadly, the, the, the impact of the, the last piece of that story about witnessing the vandalism as sort of, uh, the, maybe the final thing that sealed you in this work. Steve, y- you serve as legal counsel for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, sometimes referred to as SUWA. Uh, I'm curious about the path that brought you to that role, and, and maybe in telling that, could you share a little bit about the organization?
• 8:54
  Sure. Um, well, thank you Bill and Anders for the chance to be on the show with you. It's great. I appreciate it very much. My journey, I think I, uh, like a lot of, uh, converts, I'm, uh, a zealot, I suppose, uh, like a public land zealot. I, um, moved to Utah in 1994 to go to the University of Utah Law School, and grew up spending a lot of time outdoors with my family. My father and I fished a lot growing up and, uh, I went to law school out here hoping to end up exactly where I am. So feel incredibly fortunate, almost... Well, it's now a little bit more than 30 years later to be doing the work that I started on this journey, uh, you know, hoping to end that. Yeah, like Bill said, I'm the legal director at Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, or SUWA. We're Utah's largest conservation organization focused on the protection of public lands in our state. We've got roughly 12,000 members, uh, many more supporters throughout the nation. SUWA's membership is roughly half Utah, half outside of the state, have members across all 50 states. A large part of our work focuses on a piece of legislation that's called America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, which would designate roughly eight and a half million acres of public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management as congressionally designated wilderness. There's a lot of that in the Grand Staircase-Escalante, and SUWA was one of the groups who played
• 10:27
  a large role in moving the Grand Staircase-Escalante down the playing field. Lots of partners in that effort, but SUWA was definitely one of the groups, um, when the monument was first established in 1996.
• 10:40
  Steve, for listeners who've never been to Southern Utah-
• 10:44
  [laughs]
• 10:44
  ... paint us a picture. You know, tell us about the fishing. Tell us what else-
• 10:47
  [laughs]
• 10:48
  ... makes the landscape of Grand Staircase-Escalante so unlike anywhere else on Earth.
• 10:53
  Sure. It, it is one of the wonders of our nation. I think millions of Americans come to Southern Utah every year, and they travel between Zion and Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef National Park. Maybe they go down to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, or they go over to Lake Powell. The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is really what knits that large landscape into one place. Um, it's quintessential Utah. It's incredibly wild and remote. It's nearly two million acres of all public lands. Uh, virtually the entire monument is owned by the American
• 11:34
  people, uh, managed on their behalf by the Bureau of Land Management. Um, red rock canyons, cliffs, towering spires, um, some of the darkest night skies you can imagine. There are some great fishing opportunities I've had with my kids, which is just remarkable to be on a backpacking trip, uh, spending several days w- walking
• 12:01
  knee-deep through streams in a red rock canyon and catching brown trout along the way, uh, which is just... It's a great thing. Um-Yeah, it is really what I think most Americans think about when they think of southern Utah. It is just quintessential red rock country, and then go one step wilder, that it is... You may not see somebody for days on end if you're in the heart of the Grand Staircase.
• 12:29
  Absolutely beautiful. But Autumn, you mentioned earlier the, the damage to cultural sites. You know, I, I do wanna highlight that indigenous peoples have had connections to this landscape that go back tens of thousands of years. How does that living cultural history factor into the monument's significance?
• 12:48
  I think that how living culture intertwines with the monument's significance is that you have this very unique landscape that is so vast in geology, hydrology, botany, you know, all of these different sciences, um, but it really stands out in terms of cultural resources. Because Grand Staircase is so large, it touches many different areas of multiple tribes who, whether if they have songs that relate to that landscape, or they have ceremonies, or migration paths, um, or dances, or even pilgrimages for prayers and collecting plants, it really elevates this monument to a level of significance for indigenous people. But it also creates a significant portion of American history. And for individuals that visit the monument, it provides them a space to envelop themselves where native people still roam. You know, I, I think that a lot of times native people will get put in the past tense. Um, but in Grand Staircase, you can feel that we're still here, um, and we still connect to this landscape. And hopefully enough, we will, as time continues with this monument, continue to elevate even more on, on that education factor.
• 14:22
  So there's this rich history that permeates the place, but being in federal ownership was not the level of protection that the resources, both natural and cultural, deserve. Um, it would be a great teaching moment for our audience if you could share, and Steve, maybe I'll start with you, but both of you please jump in here, could share the ups and downs of the actual designation campaign to the point where we now do refer to it as the Grand Staircase, uh, Escalante National Monument.
• 14:52
  Well, there's a couple threads I think I would highlight, Bill. I... You know, one of the first is this area, the greater Grand Staircase Escalante and Colorado Plateau, has been on
• 15:04
  the radar screen of protected landscapes for nearly 100 years, right? Um, in the FDR administration, uh, Harold Ickes, who was the, uh, Secretary of the Interior, had
• 15:20
  a broad vision for southern Utah as a red rock landscape that would be preserved for all Americans to enjoy and visit. Um, we see pu- we saw parts of that make it through with our, you know, frankly, first national monuments, right? Four of Utah's five national parks started off as national monuments. Several of those are, um, from that vintage around Ickes' time. But, uh, it took longer to see maybe full realization of the vision for how to protect this place. Um, so starting with Ickes, moving forward, um, as Congress decided to, in 1976, when it passed the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, to have a policy of retention of federal land. We weren't gonna sell off federal public land anymore. We were gonna retain it, and work to conserve it for current and future generations. That was a landmark. And then moving forward to '96, or towards '96, I think what really crystallized the campaign to protect Grand Staircase Escalante as a national monument was the threat that the area faced from coal mining. There was a proposal by a Dutch company to have an expansive, uh, coal mine on the southern flank of the monument, on the Kaiparowits Plateau, and that very real threat
• 16:48
  crystallizing galvanized support to, instead of sacrificing the landscape, to conserve it for future generations.
• 16:59
  Autumn, I'm curious from you. Uh, oftentimes we get into these campaigns and, and almost as an afterthought there's an engagement with indigenous communities. I don't think that was the case here. Uh, but I'm curious if you could talk about that,
• 17:13
  the, the point at which all of the tribes, including your tribe, got involved in this, and, and your perspective on the campaign itself, and what made it a success.
• 17:24
  Yeah. I think that, you know, coming from a tribal perspective, when we look at the establishment of national monuments, national parks, um, or public land areas, i- it's kind of a double-edged sword, you know? Because on one hand, um, you have parcels of ancestral landscape that all of a sudden get borders put around them. And for ancestral people, we don't see borders. We see these landscapes as constantly interwoven, intertwining, and moving in sync with one another. Um, and lots of times tribes will lose cultural obligations that they have to that land, or interactions that they have with it, because of the federal regulations that get set around that particular landscape or land parcelUm, you know, when Grand Staircase was established first as a national monument, if you look back in the documentation, you'll see that this monument was designed to be a science monument. It was meant for research. Um, you know, but what type of research does that mean? And at that time, it was really focusing on sciences, so environmental, which could include wildlife, hydrology, you know, plant life. And cultural resources was taking a back burner to that science, um, motto that this monument was designated under. I think that for the Southern Paiute people during that time, we had a lot of tribal elders who were very impactful to the preservation of our culture and our cultural resources. And at that time, you see them stepping up, and you see one of the first ethnographic studies created at Grand Staircase through the Southern Paiute people, um, which was our connection to the springs and the plants, um, and the geological formation there. And so with the establishment, it did create a bridge, um, you know, because then we had federal trust responsibility that the government had and the obligation that the government has to tribes to say, "We need to do this outreach. We need to speak to tribes, and we need to figure out a way that we can mitigate management of these cultural resources while including indigenous voices."
• 19:40
  Autumn, what you're saying is so important. Um, Grand Staircase-Escalante and to, and to some extent Bears Ears too, its neighbor, uh, Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, were really the places where I learned, like, we can continue to follow this model of protecting specific sites, you know, panels or different kivas, but we're really missing the point if we do that and that the, the landscape is the site, right? The landscape is in conversation with itself, um, and you really miss out on something if you're not protecting the entirety of the area, the entirety of the story. So I'm really, really grateful to you for highlighting that.
• 20:16
  Yeah, no problem. And I, I think you, you know, you hit the nail on the head there is, is the landscape is the site. Everything that is encompassed in that landscape is culturally significant. Not one piece is more sacred or important than the other. It is all perfect and beautiful to us.
• 20:36
  So well said.
• 20:38
  Y-you both were part of a collaborative process that came after the designation, and that was to help the Bureau of Land Management to craft the management plan for the monument. I wonder if you all could take a minute to walk us through that timeline, the effort to put together the collaborative effort that it became and, and to build this plan and some of the give and take that goes on in that process and who the, who some of the players were at the table.
• 21:04
  Um, I, I'll just set the stage for a moment, I think, and let, uh, let Autumn lead out on that. But I, I think it's,
• 21:12
  uh, worth noting that, right, in twenty seventeen, President Trump, newly in office, um, came to Salt Lake City, held a little
• 21:25
  dog and pony show p-press event at the Capitol and signed a proclamation which, uh, diminished the monument, uh, from one point nine million acres to one million acres. And there was litigation that SUWA and several tribal nations and others brought to challenge that, that we never fully resolved. Um, the Trump administration did finish management plans for those smaller
• 21:55
  parcels, so for the million-acre monument and for the lands that Trump excluded. When Biden
• 22:02
  was elected, uh, by October of twenty twenty-one, he issued a new proclamation restoring the Grand Staircase. And that Biden proclamation is much more fulsome, much more robust in talking about many of the things that Autumn touched on a minute ago about how it's a culturally significant landscape, um, with many smaller sites within it, but really emphasizing the significance of the landscape. And I,
• 22:35
  I would say that I think the tribal nations and, uh, you know, really the American public were able to make lemonade from lemons. The lemons was what Trump tried to do to the monument, and the lemonade, if you will, is that we got a stronger proclamation and as we'll talk about, I think, a stronger monument plan at the end of the day that more fully reflects what's actually going on at that monument.
• 23:02
  You know, when tribes, when we had gotten the notification, um, as Steve has mentioned, um, from the Biden administration that they were going to reevaluate the resource management plan of the monument, um, we all became ecstatic because we thought, "Finally, you know, we can start to integrate our voices into the management of our ancestral lands." Um, so in twenty twenty-two, um, the tribes really hit the ground running, and we spent tireless hours, um, virtually, in person, um, going out to the landscape and making decisions, um, from each of our unique perspectives of how we would envision this monument to be managed in an ethical way while keeping it open for others outside of our tribal community so that other people could come and enjoy their public lands. And so, you know, we spent many hours, like I said, attending meetings, um, visiting public scoping meetings, handwriting comments. I think that, you know, something that's really significant to mention about our coalition, um, the Grand Staircase Inter-Tribal Coalition, is that-You know, some of the tribal elders that we had received commenting from, um, still live their lives in a very traditional way. They don't have modern resources. They don't have internet. They don't have cell phones or get on computers. You know? They have an old-school landline sometimes, if that. And so it was really sitting with these elders and handwriting comments, and then typing it in and submitting it to the BLM. And, you know, it became this really great experience, I think a generational experience for some of us younger coalition members to be able to work with our tribal elders and learn cultural knowledge from them, and be with them on the landscape. Um, and so it, it really, really was a thought-filled process, um, that many hours of energy went into. Um, and, and also hoping that while we were doing this work, um, we were going to cr- help create a standard, um, within the Utah BLM area of Southern Utah that you can work with tribes. We're not coming in to tear down walls or push others out. We're coming in to build a bridge and to work with other people, and to get them to understand our tribal perspective as well.
• 25:32
  More of the conversation after a word from those who support Wild Ideas.
• 25:37
  Kenny Wine here, coming to you from the great state of Arkansas on Lake Ouachita, and I'm running wild with Bill and Anders while I'm listening to The Wild Idea.
• 25:47
  So Steven, Autumn, you, you've sort of mentioned this ping-ponging back and forth that's happened around, um, protection of the monument, um, first in the years after designation in 1996, and then, uh, December 2017 when the Trump administration reduced the monument, opened it up, um, and then again in 2021 when the Biden administration restored the monument boundaries, um, and, and, and, and practiced made it stronger. But I'm, I'm sorta curious about that time between December 2017 and the restoration by the Biden administration, um, when the Trump administration did a- a- act to, to reduce the, the monument. Um, how did the conservation community respond? How did the scientific community respond? We heard a little bit from Autumn, I think, um, about how local tribes and indigenous people responded. Um, but, but, you know, were there studies or resources midstream that were suddenly in jeopardy? Were there, you know, long-term conservation plans that were put into question? Tell us a little bit more, uh, about what happened, uh, uh, after the announcement in December 2017.
• 26:52
  Sure. Well, happy to do that, Anders. I, um, respectfully, I'm gonna push back on one piece of what you said. I, uh, this idea of the ping-ponging back and forth, I, I really think that is,
• 27:06
  um, the wrong framing for this. Right? The common denominator here, uh, is that Trump acted unlawfully. When The Grand Staircase was established in 1996, and until Trump attacked The Grand Staircase and Bears Ears National Monuments,
• 27:23
  Americans rightly understood that national monument designations were a very durable way to protect really important landscapes and places in this nation. And like so many things about Trump and his
• 27:37
  not following precedent, his sort of rule-busting or law-breaking, however you wanna think about it, um, I think that's what happened here. And right, his attack on Grand Staircase and Bears Ears
• 27:50
  was, were these singular moments that, um,
• 27:55
  fortunately were corrected by President Biden. Is it gonna happen again under Trump? It's possible, and in my mind, that really fits into this idea of it's Trump who's the root of the problem. It's not like a ping-pong.
• 28:10
  I appreciate that clarification. Unlike, unlike Bill, I'll admit when I was wrong.
• 28:15
  [laughs] I think it's fair to say that, uh,
• 28:21
  conservation groups, tribal nations
• 28:25
  were alarmed when, uh, Trump reduced the monument. Like I said, we, many of us swung into action in federal court to work to undo that. Um, in terms of what was happening on the ground, it's, we feared the worst, uh, frankly, and fortunately, not everything that we feared came to pass. But almost immediately there was real confusion on the ground. We started hearing stories about people
• 28:58
  would come upon, uh, a family who was taking their car or their off-road vehicle where it shouldn't be, and they would tell you that they just didn't know where to drive. Signs went missing, um, and you can interpret missing, I think, in lots of ways, but signs were removed. Uh, and so people didn't know how to behave on the ground. And one thing I,
• 29:21
  I think people should understand is while Southern Utah is this
• 29:26
  r- remarkable landscape that's very resilient and, right, has withstood the test of time, it's incredibly fragile. And if it's the sites that are vandalized, like we heard about from Autumn at the beginning, if it's people pocketing fossils, right? The Grand Staircase has this remarkable richness of, uh, fossil resources, some of which are, you know, literally on the surface, um, and just walking away with them in their pockets because they didn't know how to behave anymore. Uh, to people taking their vehicles where they shouldn't. All those things we started to see on the ground.
• 30:01
  Yeah. I think just to add to that, um, you know, one thing I think that should be notated as well is you've seen a lot of permits that educational or higher education institutions had applied for. They were being removed. They weren't allowed to go in and do their research any longer, you know, which is super detrimental to future generations of people coming up in science, and how we are gauging how Mother Earth is moving and shifting, or how Mother Earth moved and shifted in the past. Um, I think that-You know, you also see shifts and changes, of course, like I said, in cultural resources. But, um, I think one of the biggest things that we as tribal nations started to wonder about was the, the cattle grazing. You know, what permits were going to be processed? Was there going to be evaluation of how the landscape is going to be affected with overgrazing? Um, also with water use and waterways, how is the Escalante River going to be studied, um, as it feeds into the greater Colorado River? And I think today we're seeing signs of that missed research. You know, we're already in a strain right now with the Colorado River. We're seeing this monument who has been extremely overgrazed, um, and has not had correct science researched attributed to watching how that, um, you know, proceeds throughout the monument in, in grasslands and the disappearance of native grasslands. So science was definitely hit hard, um, once the monument had shifted.
• 31:36
  So Steve, you declined the opportunity to predict whether or not Trump would take administrative, would take administrative action again to harm Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. But the landscape still faces a very real legislative threat, and we wanna talk about that a little bit. For listeners who aren't familiar with the Congressional Review Act, and I know many people aren't, it's, it's a, it's a really esoteric, uh, piece of legislation. Could you, uh, spend a little time explaining what it is and why its potential use here is so alarming? You know, how does a, a CRA action differ from what the Trump administration did do in twenty seventeen, and, and why would this particular tool maybe be more permanent and, and harder to undo?
• 32:21
  Sure. Um, I will give it a shot, and you can, you can drive me along or steer me along here. So just so we're clear, the first bucket is Trump, who's in the executive branch. Um, we view the Antiquities Act, which is the law that Congress passed, legislative branch, uh, delegating power to the president to establish a national monument, and that's the authority, uh, that President Clinton and Biden used to es- to establish and then restore Grand Staircase-Escalante, and we think that's the authority that Trump misused when he purported to reduce the boundaries. And we think of the Antiquities Act as a one-way ratchet. It's only used to establish monuments, not undo them.
• 33:07
  Um, and we are fearing, but thankfully it has not yet come to pass, that
• 33:13
  Trump will once again lash out at Grand Staircase and Bears Ears and maybe other western national monuments.
• 33:21
  The Congressional Review Act is a piece, uh, of legislation that Congress passed in nineteen ninety-six that was intended to allow the Congress to briefly look back at rules passed by a prior
• 33:38
  administration for a narrow window of time. So following an election, for example, the Congress could look back at rules that were finished by the prior administration as it was leaving office and have a chance to,
• 33:54
  uh, disapprove those rules.
• 33:58
  Think about things like, uh, the Food and Drug Administration or Environmental Protection Agency and how it does notice and comment rulemaking for
• 34:09
  food safety or air pollution standards. Um, what
• 34:17
  this Republican Congress has done for the very first time is weaponize that law to challenge land management plans that federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management have produced. And, um, those are not rules, right? The, so the BLM or the Forest Service or the National Park Service prepare land management plans, which are the blueprints for how to manage,
• 34:46
  uh,
• 34:48
  discrete tracts of federal land, so in this case, the Grand Staircase-Escalante. Um,
• 34:54
  the BLM doesn't think of, and most people don't think of those plans as the same kind of rule as what the Congressional Review Act was intended to reach. But this Congress is weaponizing that law to undo land management plans. They have done six already. This hundred nineteenth Republican-led, deeply anti-conservation Congress has used this law six times in North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska to undo six plans.
• 35:30
  Representative Celeste Maloy from Utah, Senator Mike Lee from Utah, have introduced what are called joint resolutions of disapproval in Congress to try and undo the Grand Staircase plan.
• 35:45
  Um, and I'm just gonna touch on one more point that you had mentioned. A, a really insidious part of this law is that if those resolutions are passed, and they're passed by simple majorities, so some people will think about the filibuster in the Senate as a way to hold up legislation, and the filibuster doesn't apply here if Congress acts fairly quickly after the resolution of disapproval is introduced.
• 36:16
  Um, if the resolutions are passed, signed by the president,
• 36:20
  the Bureau of Land Management would be prohibited from implementing a plan substantially the same in the future. Nobody really knows what that means when it comes to a land management plan, but I can tell you it's not gonna be good, and it's going to tie the hands of federal land managersFor how to protect all the things you've heard us say are special about the Grand Staircase.
• 36:46
  It's an incredibly intricate and complicated tool, and I think you just explained it as good as anybody could. So thank you. Could you, uh, I, I hate to ask you to, to speak to someone's motivations, but why does Senator Lee and Representative Malloy want to do this? What, why, what's their motivation behind even attempting something like this?
• 37:07
  Uh, they are deeply... They have very deeply held anti-public lands
• 37:15
  beliefs. If listeners may remember,
• 37:18
  Malloy and Lee are the two members of Congress who brought us the attempted public land sell-off last summer.
• 37:28
  Uh, they failed when Americans from all stripes,
• 37:33
  uh, rose up and said, "No, not here. Not on our watch." And that's something that we learned again, which is that Americans' love of public lands transcends party and ideology. Um, but as they were leaving, Lee and Malloy said, "Oh, don't worry, we'll be back." And, you know, sure enough, they are back. Um,
• 37:57
  Lee especially, uh, you know, frankly, he doesn't believe in the concept of federal public lands. He is just deeply anti-conservation. And
• 38:10
  I think that is the single biggest motivating factor is their just deep-seated animosity, antipathy towards conservation, federal public land ownership. It's, it's a little bit startling to me. I mean, I think these folks must not get outside very much, right? 'Cause if they did, they would know what they're attacking is so special and what so many millions of Americans are, uh, care so deeply about.
• 38:41
  Millions of Americans and millions of folks who live in Utah, it's my understanding they sort of claim that this is something that the state of Utah wants. I know that's not true 'cause I'm talking to two people from Utah now that love Grand Staircase Es- Escalante. But I, I guess this, this does bring up the question, what do local communities closest to the monument, and I'm thinking of Kanab or Escalante, what do they actually want? Is the, is the conversation there more complicated than the, than the national narrative might suggest?
• 39:11
  We know that, uh, the gateway communities that ring the Grand Staircase Escalante, so towns like Kanab,
• 39:20
  Cannonville, Boulder, Escalante, Tropic, Torrey, are towns who, uh, over the 30-year arc of time that we've seen Grand Staircase Escalante in place have matured and grown up around the monument, and they have
• 39:38
  a much more durable local economy now as a result of the monument being there. And this isn't, this isn't me just sort of spitballing this. Uh, Headwaters Economics out of Montana has repeatedly done studies which confirm that those gateway communities are more durable, stronger, more resilient to the sort of boom-bust from extractive industry.
• 40:04
  Having said that, we know that some local county
• 40:08
  c- c- commissioners are, uh, deeply opposed to the monument, and it's much more based on ideology than fact, I think, um, because we know that very, y- you know, the towns and the
• 40:25
  residents ringing the monument support
• 40:30
  the designation, support the conservation of that place.
• 40:34
  Autumn, I'm gonna ask you a question that might be incredibly personal, so bear with me. Um,
• 40:42
  you know, you talked about going back and capturing these comments during the designation p- phase, uh, from tribal elders. I'm curious, could you talk about if you feel, like, a specific weight on your shoulder in these fights, now the fight against this Congressional Review Act, because you're, you're, you're sort of carrying that burden of the ancestors, or does that actually lift and give you energy, or maybe, maybe it's both? I'm curious if you could speak to that.
• 41:10
  Yeah. I think that, you know, as tribal people, um, unfortunately, you know, the type of history that has hit us through the establishment of this country, um, has always been a burden that we've had to carry on our shoulders, and it is a burden, but in the same time, it is a blessing. Um, you know, Native people are extremely resilient and, you know, for my tribal nation, we have the perspective that anything that we do, we're preparing for the seven generations ahead of us. So even if today I'm carrying a burden that might seem like there's no way out of it, there's nothing but darkness, I have to believe through my cultural teachings that there is a little bit of light at the end of that tunnel, and that Creator is gonna guide us through it, and we're gonna come out on a better end. Um, and it really is, again, that connection to the landscape because where do you carry that burden? You go to the land. You give it to the land. You let Mother Earth hold it for you, and you let her nurture you to give you the strength to carry it on. And so that's where I find it is, is immersing myself in that landscape and talking to the land there and, and pulling strength from it, but also giving it gratitude, um, to say, "I acknowledge you," you know. "I acknowledge my ancestors that are there. I acknowledge all of the spirits that reside in that land, and that, um, I am here to be your voice and to speak in a Westernized world, um, that my ancestors didn't come from."
• 42:49
  That is an answer that I'm gonna carry in my heart. Thank you so much for indulging a somewhat personal question.
• 42:55
  Sure.
• 42:56
  And I have a last question for both of you, and that's what do you want listeners to carry forward with them from this conversation? If, if someone listening out there right now does one thing after hearing this episode, takes one action, what should it be? Are there specific comment periods or legislative windows or campaign moments right now where public input carries weight? Or, you know, we, we touched on the ways this monument contributes to avoiding the boom and bust economic trap of extractive industry, but is visiting the monument itself an act of advocacy? You know, how does tourism factor into the political calculus around protection? What, what should folks take away about this landscape, and, and what's the first action they should take?
• 43:47
  Well, it's a great point, Anders. I think, uh, many times you have to know a place to love it. I don't know that that is... It's hard for a lot of Americans, right? I think that this, a trip to Grand Staircase-Escalante might be a once in a lifetime trip. We're so fortunate here in the Intermountain West that it is closer, but I do think visiting it and experiencing it is its own form of advocacy. I think that's right. And supporting the local towns around it. We're in a huge fight in the halls of Congress right now to save the Grand Staircase, not to save the monuments, right? Because like we said, that's more up to President Trump, and if he unlawfully lashes out at the Staircase again, there will be more litigation. But we need to explain to members of Congress why this place matters, why the management plan that Autumn talked about with its deep tribal engagement and a framework for tribal co-stewardship of this landscape matters. And so, um, if there's one thing I think to leave people with, it's that your voice matters. Raising your voice absolutely matters. I think every day the Trump administration tries to convince people that they're helpless, and that is wrong, and raising your voice does matter, and calling your senator, your member of the House of Representatives, um, or contacting them by email makes a difference. And, um, you can go to SUWA's website, which is simply www.suwa.org. Right on the homepage is a way for you to input your home address, and it will automatically link you into sending advocacy to your member of Congress. I think that's the most powerful thing, is to make your voice heard and know that it matters, and have hope, and have hope that we're gonna win this.
• 45:43
  Yeah, I, I think that, you know, Steve summed it up pretty well, is that it is not radical to speak up. You are not a nuisance when you raise your voice about your public lands, because these are all of our public lands, and we each need to stand up, particularly right now, to fight for these beautiful places. Um, you know, even if you're not a Utahn and you may never, ever visit Grand Staircase, there is a possibility that this could happen to a monument or a landscape that is in your backyard and that you are significantly connected to. So, you know, I would agree. Start to call your legislators. Start to call your congressman. You know, sound the alarm that this is not okay and that we do need to preserve these beautiful treasur- treasures in our country.
• 46:34
  Autumn, Steve, you have been everything I thought you would be and then some when it comes to talking about this landscape, talking about the long-term effort to protect the Staircase, to get to the monument designation, to get to a well-crafted and well-balanced management plan, and you've just been so wonderful about speaking to the landscape, to the deep, deep human hi- history and cultural history that is the landscape, to the reason that it's called the Science Monument, all of that. So I just wanna thank both of you so much for coming onto The Wild Idea podcast. It's just been a real joy having you here.
• 47:10
  Yeah. Thanks for having us. We really... Well, I really appreciate it.
• 47:13
  Yes. Thank you. It's been wonderful.
• 47:15
  Coming up on The Wild Idea podcast, we engage in citizen science and how you can turn an adventure into giving back to the place through observation when we talk to the leadership team at the organization Adventure Scientists. If you want to learn more about the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and to keep in touch with everything we cover on The Wild Idea, sign up for our newsletter at thewildidea.com. We get asked a lot about supporting our work. Well, you can find a link to Buy Me a Coffee on our website, so if you're familiar with Patreon, it's sort of a version of that. You can also recommend us to a friend and give us a good review on your podcast player of choice. It is all greatly appreciated. We love sharing our curiosity with you all, and if you have something you're curious for us to explore, drop us a note at thewildidea.com. We look forward to seeing all of you on down the trail.
• 48:06
  The Wild Idea is a production of Wild Idea Media and hosted by Bill Hodge and Anders Reynolds. Production and editing by Bryn Russell at PodLab. Digital support by Holly Wilcheszewski at Datepack Digital. Our theme music, Springhill Jack, is from Railroad Earth and was composed by John Skehan. Our executive producer and ringleader is Lara Hodge. You can find The Wild Idea wherever you listen to or download your favorite podcast. If you have a minute, please take a minute to give us a rating, and if you really like us, we hope you'll subscribe. Learn more about us at thewildidea.com.