Updated map boundaries for Bears Ears NM and Grand Staircase

Bears Ears map (From Twitter screen grab of hardcopy map):

https://mobile.twitter.com/JFurKSL/status/937773686190256128/photo/4

Comb Ridge was left in but everything else around Cedar Mesa is out.

Grand Staircase-Escalante map:

https://mobile.twitter.com/JFurKSL/status/937773686190256128/photo/2

Here’s a map:

http://www.danransom.com/2017/12/grand-staircase-escalante-boundary-reductions/

Which I learned about from David Chenault:

https://bedrockandparadox.com/2017/12/03/bears-ears-in-crisis/

https://www.backpacker.com/news-and-events/bears-ears-national-monument-map

How does the reduction effect backpacking?

“How does the reduction effect backpacking?”

My first thought is perhaps more cattle at springs (although I get water often at rancher-maintained stock tanks here in the 4 corners region) and maybe increased 4wd access/use.

Anybody have an idea if user fees/permits/trailhead fees become easier or harder to get, and if they get cheaper or more expensive?

Here’s a USFS brief about use in Bears Ears NM.

Interestingly, almost nothing changed about access or use when Bears Ears NM was originally designated.

I spoke directly with USFS and BLM land use managers there and the only immediate things they changed were the diversion of OHV users away from the perimeter of sensitive archaeological areas. The BLM guy told me that they might have to walk an extra hundred yards here and there to see some of the ruins.

Grazing, OHV use, mountain biking – these uses were historically part of the area prior to NM designation, and were going to be included in the usage plan for monument as well.

But the NM was so new that a comprehensive, long-term use plan never had the chance to evolve, so a lot of the active user opponents to the NM didn’t even know how it would change for them, or if it would at all.

As of last year, the people I know who spent long periods of time there backpacking still saw cows and OHVs on their trips. I suppose it depends on where you go. It’s a big place in a sparsely populated area, so planning trips that minimize these encounters may be possible too.

I’m not sure anything will change much now that the monument designation is lifted.*

*(in the short term)

Long term, all bets are off I suppose, depending on whether or not lands will change hands between the feds and the State of Utah.

If some of those lands went to the State of Utah (I mean the state gov’t, not “the people”) in some type of land-swap or sell-off by the feds, the State of Utah could (in theory) create increased levels of protection and manage the land themselves – Dead Horse Point State Park is one example of the State of Utah managing public lands for multiple recreation uses (bike, hike) while inhibiting unrestricted grazing, development, and resource extraction.

Of course, the State of Utah would also have the right to do “other things” to those lands in order to raise some quick money for the state (e.g., sell land to private parties, sell resource extraction leases, or do “nothing” << the cheapest option?!).

Nobody can predict the future here, things are going to be unsettled for awhile I suppose.