File this under “Environmental politics make for strange bedfellows.”
The Nature Conservancy owns Dugout Ranch. A buffer zone adjacent to Canyonlands National Park, it’s the largest public and private parcel within Bears Ears National Monument, a little over 20 percent of the total. The environmental group runs a climate-change research station there and a bunch of cattle.
Many supporters of the monument have roundly criticized ranchers, justly in many cases, as contributing to environmental havoc across the West. They’re “welfare ranchers,” except in this case the owner, in collaboration with Indian Creek Cattle Co., has not only been tending cows but studying the impact of hotter, drier weather on the Colorado Plateau’s soil composition and plant life, plus zealously guarding wildlife and artifacts of early human habitation from the likes of poachers, grave robbers, miners, mountain climbers and resort developers. That’s unlikely to change no matter what President Trump does.
Details like this seem to get lost in the hubbub.
Bill Keshlear, Salt Lake City
