The shifting political landscape has shaped, reduced and reshaped Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — an ongoing fight that an area business owner refers to as ‘living in limbo.’
By Anastasia Hufham, The Salt Lake Tribune
This article is published through the Utah News Collaborative, a partnership of news organizations in Utah that aims to inform readers across the state.
Wade Barney wants one gift for his 75th birthday this April: An order from new President Donald Trump reducing the national monument in his backyard — again.
For three generations, Barney’s family has lived in Escalante, a small desert town in central Utah with fewer than 1,000 full-time residents. His father and grandfather herded sheep on the sagebrush-covered rangelands that are today part of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, overseen by the federal Bureau of Land Management.
“They loved it more than you do and more than I do,” Barney said, referring to that land.
“It meant something to them. It was special,” he continued. “They moved from cities to come out here and start with nothing.”
His family spent decades grazing livestock, maintaining water holes for their animals and wildlife and thinning trees to prevent wildfires, Barney said. The former Escalante mayor considers today’s environmentalists and the federal government as nearly one and the same, and believes the two groups are working together to lock up the land that he and his family have cared for and relied on.
Barney argues that shrinking Grand Staircase-Escalante — or getting rid of it completely — would bolster local influence on how the land is managed. Doing so, he says, would result in a healthier and more balanced use of the land, both for people traveling within the monument and for commercial development like coal mining and grazing.
For more, read this story at sltrib.com.