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Photo provided by Jackie Grant, 2024.
| What a year to have decided to quit my long-time teaching job and take on the reins of Grand Staircase Escalante Partners. The results of the latest US elections will have a direct impact on our work and the status of the Grant Staircase-Escalante National Monument. We will continue to serve in our long-standing support role because the land abides. Our labor will be needed now more than ever. I expect to see the Bureau of Land Management thrown into administrative disarray, and its funding situation to worsen. I know that the Monument’s boundaries will be reduced in size again. This knowledge is saddening, frustrating, and upsetting. We will all need time to process our grief and anger, and not just over what is going to happen to America’s public lands. However, I still have hope and will be spending even more time on the Monument over the next year to document its endangered places, show you its natural splendor, and give voice to its wonder. One of the main reasons I plan on doing this is that, prior to the election, I noticed that internet search results powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) were decidedly anti-public lands. Was this because of a bias in the algorithm? No, it was not. AI scrapes data from existing websites and news stories, and many of these stories paint a negative picture of Federal management of our public lands. Utah’s spending on anti-public lands advertising campaigns supplies information to AI that feeds the results to people on the internet. So what can we do? Keep communicating. In July of 2024, we started publishing our newsletters on the web to ensure that the public and web-scrapers could hear our story. You can help by telling your Monument story. Send your stories to us, share your story with the local newspaper, create a blog post, write to your legislator, and let us know what other ways you communicate your passion for the Monument. It has been and continues to be essential to show that our public lands have the support of many people. Donate your time or money to your favorite public lands organization. Our volunteer stewardship program began in 2021 and participation has nearly doubled in that time. In 2024 you helped us install 600 feet of fencing that protects springs, remove nearly 1,000 pounds of charcoal, and clean up over 600 square feet of graffiti that marred the Monument’s beautiful sandstone walls. Our new native plant seed collection program and Tribal partnership comes online in 2025, and will provide new opportunities for service learning and volunteering on the Monument and other public lands. Donating your time has an impact on the Monument, is good for your health, and brings us to the last item in our list. Find or build community. You are not alone. Walk with us on our journey to honor the past and safeguard the future of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument through science, conservation, and education. Community can be as simple as bringing your neighbor a loaf of bread, or as complicated as developing a national online book club about the value of public lands. The poll at the end of this newsletter will provide you with some ideas on how to find or create community. There is never a dull moment when it comes to public lands in Utah, and the next four years will be no different. Please be aware that many, many organizations are demanding our time and attention in response to the election and its impacts on the Monument. -Jackie |
