Letter to the Editor: Actually, BLM’s plans for Grand Staircase-Escalante don’t favor mining, energy development

August 21, 2018 Utah Channel 3

OPINION — You ought to check your facts before you reprint other news reports – even AP news reports.

Have you even read the Draft Resource Management Plans (RMPs) that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is proposing for the three monument units and the land that has been removed from monument status? Well, that is part of my job and I can tell you the RMPs DO NOT favor mining and energy development.

There are four alternatives from most restrictive to less restrictive, but even the less restrictive has a lot of restrictions.

For Kane County, where the majority of the monument units and the field office land is, I am truly worried that the land management plans do not do enough to promote rangeland health, allow for badly needed vegetation treatments, or allow for some economic development.

What the RMP constantly tries to do is put back into the monument the land that was removed from it by placing all sorts of restrictions on public access and usage. The RMPs try to re-convert the land removed from the monument into special management areas that are treated just like the monument where nothing is allowed.

The conservation groups that have commented on it so far haven’t read it or they would be jumping for joy and saying they could go for this noise. Instead, they are just doing their gerbil-on-a-treadmill sound bite and repeating the same thing over and over. It isn’t possible to do a “cursory reading” of a Plan and talk about it intelligently, but then, I have never credited those private interest groups (PIGs) to be real smart.

Submitted by MARY REYNOLDS, Fredonia, Ariz.

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