-
- Welcome to the Landscape, your show about America's parks
and public lands.
I'm Erin Weiss with the Center for Western Priorities,
usually based in Denver,
but coming to you today from the National Mall in
Washington, DC actually
inside the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, along
with a whole bunch of Colorado eighth graders this week.
- And I'm Kate Resinger, coming
to you from a partially sunny Salt Lake City.
Today on the podcast, we're talking to folks
with the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition about the Bears
Ears Draft Monument Management Plan.
The Bureau of Land Management is taking public feedback on
that plan right now, so keep listening
and we'll tell you how to get involved.
But first, the news.
- Our big news this week comes out of California
where President Biden expanded, not one,
but two national monuments.
The president added over a hundred thousand acres
of public land
to San Gabriel Mountains National Monument just
outside of Los Angeles.
He also added nearly 14,000 acres known as Mooch Laak,
or Condor Ridge,
to Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument.
In the northern part of the state,
both monuments were originally protected
by President Barack Obama.
These expansions are the result of years of campaigning
by organizers in both areas.
The San Gabriel Mountains expansion will increase access
to nature for underserved communities in the LA area.
The Angeles National Forest, by the way,
where this is located already sees more than four
and a half million visits every year
that is more than the Grand Canyon or Yosemite.
So this is really about increasing access to nature,
that it's a wonderful thing to see.
And Malik Laak, uh, is the ancestral home
of the Patwin people.
It served as an important trade
and travel route for indigenous groups.
With this expansion, the area's name will officially change
to honor the area's original inhabitants.
Now, these monument expansions are President Biden's first
use of the Antiquities Act in more than six months.
So that has leaders of other locally driven monument
campaigns, both in California
and across the west, hoping that the warm reception
that President Biden got
with these expansions means he'll be eager
to protect more public land in the coming weeks and months.
- Today we are joined by Davina Smith,
who represents the Navajo Nation on the Bears Ears
Intertribal Coalition.
Thank you for being here, Davina.
- Hello. Good afternoon. So glad to be on the show.
- And we're also joined by Lauren Hinson,
who is the Collaborative Management
and Tribal support specialist
for the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition.
Welcome to the landscape, Lauren.
- Thanks so much for having me.
- Alright, so let's start off with the basics.
What is a Monument management plan and why is it important?
Lauren, why don't you take this one?
- Sure. Our Monument Management plan is sort
of an overarching decision making document that's intended
to protect everything within the landscape of a monument.
So from a western planning perspective, this kind
of covers all of the resources included in a monument.
And from an indigenous perspective, a plan, uh,
should protect all the landscape holistically.
So from earth to sky, uh, for those that came
before, those that are here now
and those that have yet to come.
And having a plan is important as it will guide
how the monument is managed for many years, um,
protecting the sacred landscape,
and then hopefully adapting
to new challenges as they come up.
So we're hoping to have a really adaptive plan
that can change as we need it to.
- Awesome. So this is kind of a long-term plan
that's gonna direct the overall management
of the monument for a long time.
Um, my understanding of this process is
that the BLM provides a few alternative plans, um,
to the public, and then they, they ask the public
to to weigh in on them.
Um, can you just, can you sort of explain
how those alternatives work and,
and which one the BLM picked as it
as its preferred alternative?
- Sure. So this planning process is somewhat unique in
that it's a collaboration between two federal agencies,
the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service,
and then also the five commission tribes.
Um, so this planning process all, we're all kind
of coming together to identify, um,
what alternatives might be best for, for the monument.
And alternatives to plan really just represent a range
of options for management for the public to consider.
So we could think about maybe an example
of a range of alternatives.
We think about access to fishing in a river.
So a ra a management plan might consider a range
of alternatives that include all the way from, you know,
completely restricting any fishing access
to something in the middle, like only restricting access
to fishing during certain seasons,
or, you know, key life history time periods like spawning,
or there might be a, you know, a, a alternative
that allows any type of fishing to happen.
So this range of alternatives, um, allows the public to sort
of interact and identify, um, you know, which one
makes the most sense to them.
Um, but in the management plan, the agencies,
so in this case, the Bureau of Land Management
and the Forest Service and the tribes, uh,
and this particular planning case
will indicate the alternative that they think
will best protect and manage the monument.
Um, and then this plan that,
or alternative, the preferred alternative is alternative e
- Davina, if you could walk us through the process
that happened with tribal engagement here.
Uh, bears Ears obviously was a tribally driven
monument proposal, but, uh,
what is the Bears Ears Commission
and how is that different from the Bears Ears
Intertribal Coalition?
- Yeah. Um, so back in October of 2021,
president Biden, um, issued Proclamation, uh,
1 0 2 85, um, which as we know,
restored Bears National Monument.
And then recognized, um, also the importance of knowledge
of tribal nations in managing the monument by, um,
reconstituting the Bearers Commission.
Um, and that was, um, established
by President O Obama back in 2016.
So with the Bearers Commission that consisted
of one elected tribal leader from each of the five tribes,
um, for the, but for the Navajo Nation that I represent, um,
it, we also have a coalition representative, which I am
that coalition representative.
We do have a Navajo commissioner who is actually a council
delegate for the Utah Navajo Nation.
- Um, Davina, can you describe the Bayer's
Intertribal Coalition?
Because that's, that's what you're on
and I think that sometimes it gets confusing
with the commission and the coalition.
Um, so what is the coalition?
- So the coalition is, um, I basically the boss
of the Bears Ears, our Tribal Coalition staff.
Um, and it, it's basically collaborating
with the commission Tribal leaders, um, and,
and offering support as, as we have Lauren on the show
who specifically her focus is on the alternative ease.
And we have two co-directors, Hillary Hoffman
and Charissa, um, that both, um, delegate in terms of, um,
looking at the lens of, you know, um,
our resource management plan and EIS,
but also looking at day-to-Day operations.
And we have also other, a number of other staff
that look at, you know, community engagement, um, uh,
ethnographic and also, um, plants and medicine.
So all of that combines with the coalition
to support the Tribal Commission
and then also the commission,
the Bergers Commission at the time when it was established,
um, didn't really have a home.
So it just made perfect sense to be, um, collaborated
with the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition.
- Got it. Alright. So that then brings us
to this alternative e that Lauren mentioned.
The M's preferred alternative, uh, was
that in fact the alternative that had the most tribal input?
And, and what was that, uh, what was that like when
that document finally came down to see
that this was the direction BLM was going?
- It was about about 18 months of us coming together,
each of the tribes.
And it wasn't just only the commission, it was also our,
um, subcommittees.
So that consists of, um, each tribe bringing in their, um,
their representatives with a, uh, extensive background in,
um, cultural understandings from, from
land management plants,
but also our indigenous knowledges, um, that could pertain
to ceremonies and what it meant for that, utilizing plants,
and also the importance of water and wildlife.
So everything that consists from our, um, traditional, um,
integration of each of our tribes that we, you know,
every day would, um, coordinate with Lauren in terms
of our knowledges that was implemented in Alterna e
- Davina.
Let's talk about what's in the preferred alternative now.
What are some of the most important aspects of the plan
to the Navajo tribe
and to the other tribes in the commission?
- So I can only speak for the Navajo Nation, um,
because that's, that is who I was, um, specifically
to advocate on behalf of.
So example would be firewood, you know, firewood from,
for us is, um, as I've expressed
before, it's a living, it's, it's a living fire.
And what does that mean?
It means our traditional knowledges of what the story
of Fire meant for our Navajo people in terms of,
of course, ultimately warmth,
but also it firewood was used for many reasons.
Um, we used it for our homes, our Hogans, the Cedar Post
that was harvested from Bears Ears was,
was harvested from that area.
But also it was, it, you know, there's,
and I can't go into great detail
because the sum of that is also protected in terms
of our ceremonies,
but every part of the, the wood was utilized for
not only home, but also for ceremonies.
- So Lauren, what was that process like working with BLM,
giving them information on,
on things like firewood gathering, why that's so important?
Uh, what was the,
the working process like over those
18 months that you talked about?
- It consisted of many meetings, um, many meetings
of our cultural resources subcommittee
that Divina mentioned, um, that consists
of traditional knowledge holders
of natural resource professionals, um, you know,
basically tribal representatives that are designated
to help inform their commissioner about kinda specific
resource issues in the monument.
And then coming together
and really sharing all of their expertise, uh,
and then meeting with the commission as well
to share the cultural resources subcommittee's, um,
feedback on these documents.
And then the commission, you know, meeting
with the agencies many, many times to share, um,
this expertise, to share feedback.
Uh, so there's a combination of both, um, you know,
working together through meetings, through documents,
through calls, through landscape visits, through, uh,
we have a youth, um, an elder Conservation Corps
that goes out in the landscape
and also talked about these types of issues
and these, uh, types of considerations in the plan.
And additionally, prior to the planning process,
the coalition and some of the, some of the biggest work
of the coalition prior to the print planning process was
to create, uh, tribally led, uh, land management plan.
Um, and that was something that was delivered
to the agencies in the summer of 2022.
So this tribal land management plan was kind of used as a,
as a scaffold and as a guiding document
for this new monument management plan.
Uh, so there's been a lot of extensive collaboration, uh,
throughout this, this process with, with the agencies,
the commission cultural resources subcommittee,
and we've also been out, um, in communities to, you know,
make sure that their voices are heard
by elected leadership and the commission.
- Lauren, um, I know that there was some planning going on
for the monument before Trump attempted
to shrink the boundaries.
How did that action, um,
set back the planning process, if at all?
- Sure. So, um, one of the, one of the things
that actually ne necessitated this, um, new
monument management plan was the reinstatement
of the original boundaries of the monument.
So the same plan that applied to kind
of the shrunken boundaries from Trump, um, you know,
wouldn't necessarily cover, uh, the entirety of the monument
as it, as it now stands under the, the Biden proclamations.
So I think that was a big planning change, um,
and there is some interest in making sure that this plan,
um, comes out this year.
- Makes sense. Davina,
as we're into this public comment period in BLM,
looking now at the, the feedback
that's coming in on the alternatives, is there anything, uh,
left out of alternative e
or that the, uh, that you'd like
to see strengthened in the final
management plan when that gets done?
- I think the most important thing, as Lauren mentioned,
and I had mentioned, you know, 18 months of, uh,
coal commission and subcommittees, um, from each
of the tribes coming together, I feel that, uh,
we definitely intertwined
or woven in a lot
of our indigenous knowledges in terms of strengthening.
I think that is as, as this is just a draft right now.
And that is why input public input is really important
because that's, as tribes,
that's the most important thing we want, is
to work collaboratively, not only with agencies,
but with also the public as well.
And so to hear what their public comments are,
we definitely wanna take that into consideration.
Um, but the most important thing is that, um,
that indigenous knowledges is implemented in this,
uh, management plan.
- Davina, I have a follow up question for you.
If people are reading through the plan
and they notice things
that they think maybe don't protect wildlife enough
or are, are not protecting cultural sites should,
can they reach out to the coalition about that?
Um, before submitting comments?
What's the best way to go about that?
If people are really, you know,
interested in providing their feedback,
but they don't wanna accidentally, um,
undercut the tribal knowledge?
- Absolutely. I, right now, uh, we are, we've had a couple,
a number of public hearing comments,
some we just completed last night,
our second virtual public hearing comment.
Um, but we still have three more in person
and I really encourage those to
attend those public hearing comments
and engage with, um, the commission
and coalition, uh, leadership.
'cause we definitely want to hear if there's something
that you're unsure of or you need more, um, explanation
or clarification on, definitely come
and, you know, engage with us as well.
'cause we are there alongside with the, um, agencies.
- Cool. We'll make sure to drop the links
to those in our show notes.
- Lauren, I wanna ask about
how this plan balances the preservation
and protection of cultural sites with the increased
recreation and visitation that we know comes along
with a national monument designation.
Did BLM manage to, to thread that needle here?
- I think in the preferred alternative, um, there is a,
a recognition that,
and a kind of hearkening back to the proclamation that says,
well, rec recreation is an allowed use of the monument.
Um, the, the proclamation requires
that the management plan protects
what it calls monument objects.
So monument objects can be, you know,
many important things in the monument
that are listed in the proclamation.
Uh, so cultural resources, plants, animals.
And with this in mind, I think the plan intends to,
you know, make sure that there is still public access
to the monument, um,
and make sure that people are still able to, you know,
recreate, but that there's monitoring of the impacts of
that access, that there's, you know,
adaptive management practices, so things like closures
to areas that we're seeing a lot of impacts.
Things like seasonal closures
or closures for ceremony, closures for, um,
the land to be able to rest.
Um, but also, you know, making sure that people are able to,
you know, recreate in these landscapes in a way
that's respectful of the sacred nature of this landscape,
but kind of also respectful of, of, um,
that access for folks.
- And I suppose all of that gets multiplied when you're
talking about off-roading, OHV use.
Uh, how did the, the plan do in terms of identifying areas
where it is safe
or appropriate to do that versus areas that
that need to be closed off?
- Sure. So under the per alternative, currently, uh,
the majority of the monument is classified as OHP limited.
And this classification really, uh, means
that there's a little bit, gives the commission
and the agency's a little more time to determine how,
you know, folks are using these OHP areas.
Um, and it's, it's a little more adaptive,
it's a little bit more malleable.
Um, instead of, you know, saying
that this is areas either completely open
or completely closed, um, it allows
for a little bit more flexibility, um, to identify, oh,
well perhaps folks from the Navajo nation are,
are using these roads to, um, access
wood harvest areas.
Um, and making sure that, you know,
we're not cutting off that type of access.
But also making sure that there's areas
that are seeing impacts to cultural resources
that are seeing impacts to wildlife
or plants from OHB use,
that those areas can be closed either, you know, seasonally
or can be closed, um, for periods
of time for landscape rest.
- Um, Davina, I know you mentioned that you guys,
the coalition are hold is holding, um, public hearings
for the public to, to provide feedback on the plan
and to learn about the plan.
Um, are those happening in tribal communities
and are you doing any other tribal, um,
outreach about the plan in communities on reservations
and tribal areas?
- So the outreach, um,
I mean it is under the BLM website in terms of
where the public hearing comm is,
but we wanted to go further in terms of engaging
with our tribal community.
So our coalition staff, um,
Harrison Gorman is a community director
and he has, um, engaged with each of the commission
and coalition leaders, um, in their communities
to ha set up.
Um, we have a public, uh, screening that's been, um,
conducted also, um, just background about the, the Bearers,
our tribal coalition, the resource management plan.
Also, another area that, um,
our comms director is utilizing is radio
because a number of these tribal communities,
their main access is radio, so utilizing radio,
but also newspaper in the Navajo Times.
Um, commissioner Uni to
and I, um, with the support
of the comms director implemented an op-ed about the Bears
Ears Resource Management plan.
So, um, definitely have the staff that's collaborating
with the agencies in terms of getting that word out
to our tribal communities.
- And then what comes next?
What kind of timeframe are we on?
You mentioned hopefully BLM getting this
done by the end of the year.
Um, how long is the public comment process and then, uh,
and then what comes between point A and point B
and hopefully having this management
plan, uh, locked in place?
- Sure. Um, so the end of the public comment period
is June 11th.
So that's important for folks to know
for submitting public comments, um,
and for also attending these, these public comment hearings.
And then following that, there's sort of a, a, um, set
of review periods that lead up to kind
of the final release date of the plan, which we are hoping,
uh, in sort of late, um, fall, uh,
early spring next year.
That's kind of the, the, uh, deadline
for releasing the plan.
Uh, but there's a series of, uh, government review periods
and then also some review periods by the commission, uh,
where the plan will sort of be, uh, reviewed,
public comments will be reviewed
and then incorporated into the plan, uh, responded to.
So any substantive public comments that are received,
any comments that include new information, any comments
that have, um, you know, specific questions,
specific information that could be, uh, responded
to in the plan will be, will be responded to
by the agencies, um,
also in collaboration with the commission.
- Awesome. Well, I wanna just open the floor really quick
and ask both of you.
Is there anything else you want people
to know about this plan?
Um, either it's historic significance
or, um, what's actually in it?
- For me, it's a bit of both
because it is historic in terms of tribal input.
I think that's the one thing I, as I've, I I'll share,
attending some of the public hearing.
I think there's this hesitancy from non-natives to engage.
And that is why we felt this is the time to definitely,
this is what collaboration looks like.
And, um, I know also that change is hard
and so we're, you know, it's, it's, it's gonna be difficult,
but that's why we as commission
and coalition felt this would be a perfect time at these
public hearing, public comment hearings to engage with us
and to get that clarification.
And, and rather than this assumption
of whether it's gonna be like, oh, everything's gonna close,
there's gonna be no access, which is not the case.
Um, so I encourage, you know, with the remaining of the,
the in-person public comment hearings, um, to attend
and to engage with us.
And so I,
and I hope, you know, we can continue to move forward in
that, um, that, that aspect. So.
- Awesome. Anything from you, Lauren?
- Sure. Yeah, I think I'll just echo Dina's, um, comments
that I think the commission is really excited to hear
what the public has to say about this plan,
and that this plan does really reflect extensive tribal
input collaboration, um, also compromise in some areas,
but that it's really innovative and it's new and exciting.
Um, if you read through the plan,
you'll see almost every section includes traditional
indigenous knowledge, um,
and includes, uh, many other aspects of tribal expertise
that are pretty foreign to monument management plans
and resource management plans.
So this is a new type of plan, um,
and it's exciting to see
that it might potentially get implemented, um,
that it's getting out to the public.
And we're excited for the next steps.
- All right. Well, we'll leave it there.
Davina Smith, Navajo Nation representative on the Bears Ears
Intertribal Coalition,
and Lauren Henson, collaboration, collaborative Management
and Tribal Support Specialist
for the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition.
Thank you both for being here today.
- Thank you so much. Thank you.
- In good news this week,
Democrats in the House are asking the government
accountability office to investigate foreign owned companies
that mine on US public lands.
And a letter to the GAO the lawmakers wrote
that there is evidence that companies seeking federal
mineral leases may be subsidiaries of foreign companies,
including adversarial countries accused
of serious human rights and environmental violations.
Now, maybe I'm getting ahead of my skis here,
but I could see a world in which the same lawmakers
introduce legislation barring these companies from operating
on public lands in the United States,
which would be pretty awesome.
But first, let's see what the GAO report finds,
- And that'll do it for us today.
Be sure to check out the links in the show notes
to learn more about submitting public comments on
that Bears Ears Management Plan.
You can submit a comment just broadly in support
of the tribal plan if you don't have anything specific
to add, but of course, specific feedback
always goes even farther.
And always feel free to reach out
to us here at the landscape
that email is podcast@westernpriorities.org.
- Thanks again to Davina and Lauren for their time today.
And thank you for listening to the Landscape.