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Hobo Greg
Trad climber
ISELIN
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I can't believe so many climbers are against national monuments. Why do some people wish to see every square inch of land developed, exploited, and otherwise shat upon? What is to gain that we don't already have? Are we not already the richest nation in the history of the world? What more do we need?
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Jkruse
Trad climber
Las Cruces, NM
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growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
-cactus ed
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Social climber
Wilds of New Mexico
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Most of the people on this forum who oppose monuments likely never climbed or haven't climbed in years and don't care about losing access.
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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I can't believe so many climbers are against national monuments.
The apathy, for lack of a better word, of climbers with respect to protecting Bears Ears continues to surprise me. I know some have reservations about management by the park service. Ron appears to be one of that crowd. But we all know that national monuments are barely a blip on the radar. Joshua Tree was a sleepy, backwater national monument for years until it went bananas after becoming a park. I don't find Ron's argument convincing either. Sure it's easy to toil in solitude when the land isn't managed or privately owned, but given the visible signs of climbers and their gear in Yosemite, Zion, Joshua Tree, etc., etc., without any loss of access, I don't find that argument too convincing. You want to lose access quickly? Let a private company block it off to exploit mineral rights.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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OTEASTD You seem to think that access is guaranteed as a park.
The only thing that is guaranteed are more crowds. Indian Creek protected itself.
Fat Dad, you haven't seen the whimsical and capricious side of the NPS that I have.
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Social climber
Wilds of New Mexico
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All climbing on all federal land is subject to restrictions imposed by arbitrary bureaucrats and it happens here and there. I will take my chances with that over guranteed full closures based on mining, timber and O&G operations.
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Fat Dad
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Fat Dad, you haven't seen the whimsical and capricious side of the NPS that I have. Ron, I don't doubt it for a minute. It's not an easy issue for me either way. As ontheedge mentioned, given a choice, I'd rather take my chances with the feds than private corporate interests.
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Brian in SLC
Social climber
Salt Lake City, UT
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From Obama's executive order on the Bears Ears:
"The area contains numerous objects of historic and of scientific interest, and it provides world class outdoor recreation opportunities, including rock climbing, hunting, hiking, backpacking, canyoneering, whitewater rafting, mountain biking, and horseback riding. Because visitors travel from near and far, these lands support a growing travel and tourism sector that is a source of economic opportunity for the region."
Trump's executive order:
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McGinnis
climber
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http://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2017/12/03/effort-to-shrink-bears-ears-national-monument-started-before-donald-trump-was-elected-president/
Effort to shrink Bears Ears National Monument started before Donald Trump was elected president
Sen. Orrin Hatch and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, were key players in the anti-monument campaign.
Hatch pitched the anti-monument cause as a “fight back against Washington overreach,” mirroring the GOP nominee’s drain-the-swamp campaign mantra.
While polls and pundits expected a Hillary Clinton presidency, Hatch and others had already started laying the groundwork to overturn any Obama action should Trump win the White House. And when he did, the concerted, full-court press began, according to officials involved at several levels of the Utah effort.
“It started well before,” said Boyd Matheson, president of the Sutherland Institute, which helped lead the fight against the monument and subsequently to shrink it. “Every elected official from the mayors to the commissioners, every single elected representative, got engaged in it. It was the real, Utah cumulative, everybody-pull-together kind of thing.”
The Trump administration had a lot to do in the transition, mainly because many in the campaign had bought into the narrative that Hillary Clinton would win. With the whole Cabinet to nominate, a White House to staff and pending national security and domestic agendas to be plotted, public lands weren’t on the top of the list.
But they were for Utah leaders.
“Utah definitely made sure that it was on the president’s radar,” Matheson said.
The effort included calls, emails, letters and sit-downs with transition officials.
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Jon Beck
Trad climber
Oceanside
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Weren't the managers at Christmas tree pass trying to chop everything, that place is very obscure and part of a lowly Recreation area
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Trashman
Trad climber
SLC
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Yep, the gubmint shore does hate climbing, wait until they find out people are climbing in Yosemite, and that it’s one of their parks!
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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fixed anchor ban bishes, the toker has a point.
and (admittedly lax) enforcement of such is much stronger in cases of NM or NP status.
still though, toker, you been to IC recently? you notice the turds at the cliffs, stuffed partway under rocks? how about the spent tubes of herpes medication? I mean some kind of potent management (not BLM or local) might help with simple, simple LNT practices actually occurrign.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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After years of GWB and BHO open-borders immigration policy, I wonder just how much of an impact setting aside 800k acres really has. Immigrants use resources too.
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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what? abstruse goose called and he wants his logic back
not sure what Juan mopping the floors at the burger joint has to do with public empty-lands management.
I'd like to see some gymnastics so please enlighten me Lituya.
Also, while you're at the calisthenics, could you please clarify, in your own words, what exactly the Obama "open-border policy" was?
How has the current POTUS changed the borders in a way that will affect IC or American BLM land Lituya?
Wait-a-minute! I think I'd rather go gym climb.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Climbing at Indian Creek was not threatened before Obama's Bears Ears designation, it is not threatened now.
What I've learned in spending a little time looking into this is that the Access Fund appears to have morphed from an organization with the primary goal of preserving climbing access into an organization that is primarily concerned with general liberal environmentalist lobbying (which ironically is more of a threat to climbing access than extractive industries, at least if the past is any predictor of the future).
I'm basing my opinion to a large extent on reading the Access Fund's website, which I found to be utterly unconvincing in presenting Bears Ears as a dispute involving climbing access.
(This isn't to say that Obama's Bears Ears designation wasn't good for other other reasons, or that Trump's reversal is legal; I don't really have an opinion on those issues one way or the other. The legal issue is, I take it, at least fairly debatable--I certainly haven't read anything to the contrary, notwithstanding the Access Fund's conclusory pronouncements.)
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Trashman
Trad climber
SLC
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Climbing at Indian Creek was not threatened before Obama's Bears Ears designation, it is not threatened now.
Nope, but I bet that OHV trail San Juan county wanted next to creek pasture is back on the table now. Gonna need a lot more didgeridoos and zen flutes to drown that out.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Sorry if this was addressed cause I haven't read the thread but I have one quick question.
Is the former monument getting converted back to its original public land designation (national forest, BLM, or whatever) or is it getting sold to private interests and will no longer be public land?
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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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still public. just more open to extraction, drilling, more likely to face ATVs etc, LESS likely to face fixed anchor ban, hordes of (climbing and other) tourons, etc
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Trashman
Trad climber
SLC
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So far. One dark thought that occurred to me this morning; Trump really doesn’t want Romney running for Hatch’s seat, and seems to be courting Hatch to run again. Official Utah pol position was never just eliminating BENM, they wanted the lands “returned” to the state.
Seems incredibly stupid for a senate seat(esp one that has no chance of changing parties) but I’ve lost count of the times I’ve muttered “They can’t be that stupid…” this year.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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@BraveRacistCowboy - not sure what Juan mopping the floors at the burger joint has to do with public empty-lands management.
A rather stunning comment.
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