Former Interior Secretary Sally Jewel calls claims that public groups were kept out of the conversation during planning meetings for the Bears Ears National Monument “nonsense.”
The monument was designated by President Obama during his final days in office, but current Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has recommended that the monument’s boundaries be downsized. Opponents of the monument, including some ranchers in southeastern Utah, have argued that their opinions weren’t considered. The area is still a popular food-foraging zone for many tribes, including the Navajo.
“All parties were heard. We worked very hard, for the entire four years I was there, with Congress and Utah Rep. Rob Bishop’s office on his public lands initiative,” says Jewell in a Q&A with High Country News. Bishop’s public lands initiative was a statewide effort to revise the use of federal and state lands, including areas that encompassed the Bears Ears National Monument.
“But there was a tremendous amount (of public input) between the meetings that he (Bishop) held, the meetings that we held, and the four-day visit that I had down there, which was the largest public meeting with, I think, 1,500 or so people, so to say voices weren’t heard is not true.”