A very good article about Utah hypocrisy and the Mighty Five national parks falls short of greatness with a steaming chunk of capitalist hypocrisy of its own

A very good but not quite great article by Mark Sundeen about the crowding at Utah's Mighty Five and Park Service issues in general, along with Utah state gummint hypocrisy, caught my eye earlier this week.

It talks about the crowding, or overcrowding at Utah's five National Parks, labeled the "Mighty Five" as part of a marketing campaign a decade ago. It talks somewhat, but not as much as it probably could, about the state of Utah's hypocrisy.

But beyond that? I said very good but not quite great. It falls short because, near the end, Sundeen tells an outright lie:

As Grand County’s Kevin Walker pointed out, national parks are built and managed to handle people, and despite the continuous budget cuts over the past two decades, they’ve done a good job of it, even if the only solution at Arches, for now, is to simply shut the gate.

No, they haven't done a good job of it, and I let him and the mag know that in a detailed five-tweet stream.

Let's post those tweets and then go beyond that.

.@outsidemagazine & .@SundeenMark There are a couple of untruths in what is generally a great piece about Utah/Mighty Five. Biggest untruth is that .@NatlParkService does a great mgmt job despite cuts. BULLSHIT. 1/x https://t.co/7nAUhOmdpb

— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) February 2, 2020

And, bullshit it is. Sorry, Mark, no other word for it. And, everything I list in subsequent tweets, and beyond, you surely know about. (He actually liked this Tweet on Twitter.)

Reality is that customer service & everything related to it has gone downhill in National Parks
1. Longer waits for info at visitor center desks.
1A. More of this help dumped unto volunteers from "Friends of Park X" orgs.
2. Non-paved roads getting ever crappier
2/x

— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) February 2, 2020

As for the non-paved roads? Per my recent blog post about my first visit to Big Bend in more than 8 years, Grapevine Hills has gone downhill, going by memory. When I told a visitor desk ranger about driving Pine Canyon in a 2wd car, he was almost agog. That was 15-plus years ago, and I'm sure the road has gone downhill since then. And, the waits at visitor center desks.

More probs at National Parks?
3. Last time I was in Lower Yose it was March, prolly spring break time 4 many Cal schools. Shuttle buses ran less than half as often as Zion. Was faster to walk to popular places in heart of Valley.
3A. Concessionaires get ever more pricey there 3/x

— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) February 2, 2020

I mean, Mark, I could write a whole blog post in response to you JUST about how budget cuts have made the Yosemite experience worse. You know I could, too.

So, maybe your comment was a throwaway line, or an attaboy one for the Park Service? I don't care. It doesn't make it any less untrue. Let's continue. We'll go back to Zion.

4. At Zion itself, per links within this blog post, Park staff have said budget cuts have meant they can't buy more shuttle buses, which they need cuz they're overloaded
4A. Budget cuts reduce backcountry ranger work, so, more trail-cutting etc.
4/xhttps://t.co/WXQLTZo1Y4

— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) February 2, 2020

As I noted on that post, more money would also allow replacing current propane fueled buses with electric ones. Given the amount of solar panels Zion already has, it would be relatively easy to recharge them.

And, not mentioned on that post, but an increasing problem? People flying drones inside NPS units. And, the problem of patrolling and policing for that, with ongoing budget cuts.

And, it's not just these parks. About 18 months ago, I visited Rocky and Mesa Verde, the latter for the first time in years and quite possibly the last time ever. As I separately blogged, at Rocky and definitely at Mesa Verde, budget cuts have caused real problems, and at Rocky, have even worse, caused rangers to plug concessionaires.

So, Mark? Throwaway line or not, this was a lie. Period. And blatantly. You owe readers an apology. Not that you're likely to give one. That's in part, I'm sure, because Outside depends on ads — from places like concessionaires inside these national parks, tour guide groups in the cities next to them and so forth. (And read just how much Outside tracks your ass with cookies, analytics, Facebook, etc., if you don't wear lots of online condoms on your browser to protect yourself. And that page notes that, for browsers like Firefox, "do not track" signals are ignored.) Definitely, since your park reviewers at places like Joshua Tree or Zion plug outside businesses in their stories, you don't want to write anything that discourages visitors.

Also, "shutting the gate" at Arches? (I've been by the entrance when it looked like the park was going to be closed at any second.) It's not a "good" solution; it's the "least bad" solution.

A "good solution" would be the city of Moab and its former Arches staffer mayor creating a shuttle bus from town to the park, in combo with the park starting one inside the park.  Kind of amazing that Sundeen didn't think of that. (For that matter, the park starting one inside the park would itself be a huge difference. Supposedly it was considered four-five years ago but deemed "not reasonable." Bullshit there, too. The one-road system [not counting the dirt road going out the NW end of the park] is EXACTLY like Zion Canyon.)

Finally?

Besides the gummint cuts to National Parks actually affecting service there, Mark, don't even get me started on #GangGreen enviro groups. Oops, started myself, like here, where I also call for killing the Access Pass and going back to the Parks Pass 5/x: https://t.co/tJvyUWMmhV

— reallyDonaldTrump 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) February 2, 2020

In that blog post, and to follow on it? If we look at the old Parks Pass being $50 and the Access Pass being $80, but almost all of that extra $30 going undeservedly to BLM, USFS and USFWS? Make the Parks Pass $65 and you've helped funding right there.

And, in this piece, Outside comes off as close to GangGreen, even though Mark himself outside of that may not be. But he may be. 

He does admit selling his soul out for magazine story cash by revealing secret hot spots for a story. And he adds the background that he was living in New York City then, which I would say is a sellout itself. If you hadn't been living there, you wouldn't have been cash-flow poor.

Also, not a bad, but also not a good thing, he misses a beat. He doesn't pick up on, when Gov. Herbert expanded the original campaign, he didn't include Natural Bridges National Monument. Maybe that's because Natural Bridges, unlike Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, has been around for some time, and is an NPS unit, not BLM.

Bears Ears — the controversy and concern

I have seen Bears Ears many a time — after all, they're visible from as far as 90 miles away in southeast Utah. I've seen them from the edge of Canyonlands. From the Abajos. From Natural Bridges. From the Moki Dugway. From Canyon of the Ancients in Colorado. From Garden of the Gods. From Monument Valley in Arizona.



But, I'd never driven the road up to them.

Which I rectified on my most recent vacation.

President Barack Obama's creation of Bears Ears National Monument, blogged about by me, President Donald Trump's downsizing that and splitting it into two units, the non-contiguous Shash Jáa in the south and Indian Creek in the north units, the former including the actual Bears Ears. And, Trump may be playing politics with the name for the new, and hopefully temporary by legal ruling first unit, as noted in the Salt Lake Tribune. (And I am SHOCKED that Interior Secretary chief hack Ryan Zinke, an even bigger Lyin Ryan than outgoing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, lied about the renaming. (There's a good GIF map there of various proposals for the size of the area and the designation, whether national monument or not; by size, Obama's action is very close to what Utah's own Congresscritters Jason Chaffetz and Rob Bishop proposed, though without national monument designation.

Very worth a read: A new National Geographic article on Bears Ears and related issues.

Given things in Moab and in and around Arches National Park, I also get the concerns the likes of Jim Stiles had that the monument would bring an avalanche of recreational tourism. But, I think that's way overblown, as I've said before.

First, that has not happened in a Moab-like way in the Grand Staircase-Escalante area. There have been a few complaints that Escalante itself has gotten too tourist-dependent on some of its businesses, but from what I read about that recently in High Country News, it's nowhere near a Moab-type problem. (Beyond that, nothing's stopping Mormons in Southern Utah from ramping up heritage tourism.)

Second, there's a finite amount of both recreation time and dollars.

Take only memories, leave only footprints, is very true in Grand Gulch.

Third, Bears Ears, like GSE, is more off the beaten path.

Stiles has recounted decades-old patrolling of that area by the BLM with presumed military surplus helicopters. Nobody wants that noise today. But, national monument designation might have led to drone patrols that wouldn't happen otherwise, among other things.

Beyond that, the Geographic story notes another concern. With digital cameras, and even more, smartphone cameras, geotagging photos, it becomes easy for more and more people to visit back-country ruins. Even if not vandals or for-profit thieves, they may still steal potsherds or masonry stones, or otherwise disturb the provenance of a site.

This:

“The strategy of leaving it alone and trying to keep it a secret is unsustainable,” says Josh Ewing, executive director of Friends of Cedar Mesa, a conservation group.

Sums it up.

I know Stiles rightly questions Friends of Cedar Mesa's old plans to sell guided tours of the monument's backlands. Fine, but here's a better idea than chucking that entirely. Cut the price on such tours to more reasonable levels, and have the tribes involved with monument management, not Friends of Cedar Mesa, run them.

Fines from lawbreaking, especially on violating antiquities, could have a cut go to the tribes, too.

Beyond that, Stiles has now graduated from being an Ed Abbey quasi-propagandist to a full-on Mormon propagandist, in my opinion. When he says that Mormons have not only been persecuted as bad as American Indians but also indicated that said persecution of Mormons had just as little justification, it's hard to take anything he says about anything without HUGE grains of salt, if he doesn't post a URL for me to read through and make my own determination of his interpretations.

Other thoughts:

Per that Tribune link, the Navajos' link to Bears' Ears is the most tenuous, and may come close to the cultural appropriation that marks much of Navajo religion. (All religions have degrees of cultural appropriation and syncretism, but very few on the level of the Navajo.)

For a plethora of petroglyph and ruins pictures from Cedar Mesa and elsewhere, go here, or to a blog post of Randy's here.

Political briefs - Norquist, DOMA, Utah enviros

First, a falling out between anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist and wingnut Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn? So sad. Interesting that Corbin is leaving the door open for some sort of tax increases. Wow.

Second, Speaker John Boehner's defend DOMA firm, King & Spaulding, has quit the project. In turn, former George W. Bush Solicitor General Paul Clement has quit the firm.

Meanwhile, Utah environmentalists and the oil & gas industry are finding room for compromise.

Definitely a News of the Weird day.

Utah Gov: GOP can’t ‘just say no’

We’re not in Nancy Reaganland anymore is the message of the Republican governor of one of the nation’s most conservative states. Jon Huntsman wants positive proposals (are you listening, “tea partiers”?) and not just “grousing and complaining.”

It would do us all a whole lot of good if we actually started engaging directly in finding compromises and common ground and shared solutions.

Odds are tea partiers are still holding their breath and pouting right now.

Arches National Park gets partial oil reprieve

The BLM has backed down on issuing oil and gas leases near Arches National Park, Dinosaur National Monument and Canyonlands National Park, all in Utah.

Some of those parcels were within a miles and a quarter of Arches' iconic Delicate Arch.

That said, despite listening to some National Park Service protests, the BLM is still leaving in place a number of drilling leases that are on sites readily visible (and audible) from inside Arches.

BLM sells out southern Utah

New Bureau of Land Management proposed resource management plans would severely lessen protection of both environmental and archaeological beauty in places like Cedar Mesa.

As drafted, per High Country News, the plans open about 80 percent of this land to energy development. Nearly half a million acres would lose their status as areas of critical environmental concern.

That means ORVs tearing up more fragile land. It means fragmenting wilderness study areas to deliberately make it harder to make them into protected wilderness. And it means more oil and gas drilling.

“It’s the Bush administration’s last stand to make sure Utah’s public lands are open for development,” says Liz Thomas, attorney at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

To make matters worse, the BLM is rushing the changes through.

“We really need to get these wrapped up because we’re running out of money,” explains Don Ogaard, lead planner for the Utah BLM. The fiscal year ended on Sept. 30, and the Utah BLM cannot suck any more money out of the national coffers for the plans, he says. All of the records of decision will be signed by the end of October.

Uhh, yeah, right. Nov. 4 is the date on your calendar, Mr. Ogaard.

Delicate Arch at sunset from my vacation

Here's some sunset and near-sunset pictures of world-famous Delicate Arch in Arches National Park in Utah.

Unfortunately, I was one evening too late to get the just-before-full moon inside the arch at sunset.

This is why I hike the West on vacations, and, as in some of these pics, it is also why I have an ultra-wide lens.

More pictures from this and previous vacations of mine are here.

Alaska to sue over polar bear listing

The state of Alaska, boo-hooing that listing polar bears as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, says it will sue the U.S. Department of Interior.

You know, Alaska reminds me of Utah, and Alaskan politicians of Utah counterparts, specifically over their fights over Grand Staircase-Escalante, etc.

They make massive amounts of money off tourism, probably more in Alaska and definitely more in Utah, in the short term than off extractive industries, and definitely much more in the long term.

But both states lust after carbon, whether in the form of oil or of coal, like a cheap junkie looking for a fix. And, their eyes can’t see beyond that next fix.