From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):
When the administration decided to shrink the borders of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, we worried this was coming.
The Bureau of Land Management released its draft plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante — and it unfortunately doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the plan opens the door for mining and drilling on once-protected land.1
Go to https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=28644 to tell the Bureau of Land Management: No mining or drilling near Grand Staircase-Escalante.
The BLM is now holding a public comment period on the plan, and we all need to be a part of it.
The red stone arches of Grand Staircase-Escalante might be second only to the Grand Canyon as the most iconic natural formations in our country. Its sedimentary rock formations hold 30 million years of fossils, and the ruins of prehistoric villages stand silent witness to history.2
It would be a tragedy to see this place crawling with bulldozers and dotted with oil wells, its ancient cliffs blasted away by mining operations.
Add your public comment: Protect Grand Staircase-Escalante.
Grand Staircase-Escalante is an invaluable and irreplaceable piece of our natural heritage, but the decision we face here is even bigger than that.
We have to decide what kind of legacy we want to leave when it comes to our effect on the natural world. Years from now, do we want future generations to look back on us as the people who mined and drilled every inch of land in our nation just to get a little more oil — which is now long since burnt up and gone — or do we want them to thank us for preserving natural beauty that was here before us, and will remain long after us?
I know which I’d choose.
Stand up for Grand Staircase-Escalante — add your comment today.
-
Cassidy Randall, “US poised to allow more mining on land Trump removed from monuments,” The Guardian, August 16, 2018.
- “Grand Staircase-Escalante,” Visit Utah, accessed August 27, 2018.
Leave a Reply