Utah pols continue anti-public land buffoonery
And a new study predicts bigger future flows for the Colorado River
🤯 Annals of Inanity 🤡
INANE ACT: Utah State Rep. and gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman and Lynn Jackson, a candidate for Lyman’s seat in the legislature, turn a protest of the proposed closure of Arch Canyon to motorized vehicles and ban on target shooting within Bear’s Ears National Monument into a grievance and victimhood campaign rally and a lot of whining about “federal overreach.”
CONTEXT: Bears Ears National Monument is rightly named after the two Wingate-sandstone capped buttes that rise up from the middle of the 1.3-million-acre swath of public land in southeastern Utah. Yet if I were to pick a heart of the monument, I’d be more likely to lean toward Arch Canyon, which starts on Elk Ridge near the buttes and slices a deep, 12-mile-long gorge through Cedar Mesa before joining up with Comb Wash under a grove of tall cottonwoods. My family and I used to camp under those trees when I was a kid, and we’d hike up the canyon, following the perennial stream that was alive with flannelmouth suckers, tadpoles, and water striders, gazing up at cliff dwellings nestled in tiny alcoves high up on the sheer, desert varnish-streaked cliffs.
Back then cattle were allowed to graze in the canyon, trampling the stream banks and taking refuge in — and pooping on — an Ancestral Puebloan site near the canyon’s mouth. Thankfully, a hard fought legal battle eventually got the cattle removed from Arch Canyon and a few other nearby canyons. But there is also a road up the canyon bottom, and on those long-ago hikes we’d occasionally encounter a jeep or Land Cruiser. The road remains, allowing OHVs to roar eight miles up the canyon, crossing the creek multiple times in the process.
The draft Bears Ears National Monument management plan proposes closing Arch Canyon to motorized vehicles to protect the riparian corridor and the natural and cultural sites there, and because it just makes sense to do so. It’s the only significant motorized closure under the plan’s preferred alternative, meaning about 800,000 acres would remain open to motorized travel on designated routes. The plan would also ban target shooting throughout the monument. There would be almost no changes to the existing grazing regime.
Basically, land managers and the Bears Ears Commission are looking to close an eight-mile dead-end road to protect a spectacular canyon, one of the area’s only perennial streams, and imperiled native fish, while leaving hundreds of miles of other roads and trails open to OHVs. And they want to nix recreational shooting to prevent people from shooting up landforms and petroglyphs — hunting will still be allowed.
It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask. Yet for this, the likes of Lyman and Jackson are skewering these land protectors as “overlords,” and are urging their followers to band together because they are “going up against a monster. … You have to fight back, you have to have the stomach to fight back.” Jackson added: “You can’t compromise.”
Not only is this Trump-esque rhetoric dangerous, but it’s also inaccurate. It willfully ignores the fact that the proposed management plan is itself a deep compromise, leaving out many of the protections Indigenous and environmental advocates want. In fact, the preferred alternative is remarkably unrestrictive and, some would say, miserably fails in its mission to protect this special landscape.
But admitting that land managers are far from overlords, and instead are bending over backwards to appease even the uncompromising likes of Lyman and Jackson, wouldn’t fit with Lyman’s preferred narrative of grievance and victimhood. Nor would it rile up his similarly minded base. And in the end this new breed of Republicans is far more interested in riling than in governing; in inciting anger and obstruction rather than in seeking solutions.
🥵 Aridification Watch 🐫
Could global heating actually increase precipitation in the Colorado River Basin? Perhaps, according to a new study out of the University of Colorado, and a forecasted uptick in snow and rain should partially offset the effects of warming temperatures on river flows. The researchers say that’s because “precipitation has, and will likely continue to be, the main driver of the river flow at Lee Ferry.”
"We find it is more likely than not that Lee Ferry flows will be greater during 2026-2050 than since 2000 as a consequence of a more favorable precipitation cycle," said Martin Hoerling, the paper's lead author, in a press release. "This will compensate the negative effects of more warming in the near term."
This relatively rosy finding is based on a suite of climate models, including ones from the International Panel on Climate Change, that forecast a 70% chance of increased precipitation in the Upper Colorado Basin in coming decades. But water managers probably shouldn’t abandon efforts to cut consumption on the River just yet: 70% isn’t exactly a sure thing; the researchers acknowledge that there’s also a chance that precipitation could stay as miserably low as it has been for the past two decades, or even decline.
And Brad Udall, a CU climate scientist who was not involved in the study, told KUNC’s Alex Hager that he has a bit of “unease” regarding the projections, adding that modeling future precipitation is filled with uncertainty. Temperature modeling, meanwhile, uses different methods and is therefore more reliable: It’s going to keep getting warmer.
And those higher temperatures can erase some of the gains from higher precipitation levels, as this winter and spring demonstrated. Even though there was a normal amount of snowfall in many places, this spring’s runoff is expected to be below normal thanks to a rapid snowmelt.
First there was Cal Black, bad enough, and now this Lyman figure. Worse still. The Blacks and Lymans going way back instigating land capture infrastructure ‘round Blanding & so. Funny who’s calling the kettle black.
"And in the end this new breed of Republicans is far more interested in riling than in governing; in inciting anger and obstruction rather than in seeking solutions." Correct. I was recently at the pointy end of one of Lynn Jackson's interminable online tantrums where he mocked & berated & belittled me for applauding the spirit of the BE Intertribal Coalition management plan. Most infuriating is that he would jump the net in the middle of the match & feign concern for indigenous people, speaking on their behalf, as if he has his crooked finger on the pulse of the needs of Indian Country, as if whatever land management plan he supports would have indigenous interests top of mind. Very gaslighty, very "white savior".