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Science and Innovations

Earth Notes: Protecting the Bear's Ears

Bears Ears Coalition

Among the most prominent landmarks of southern Utah are the Bear’s Ears—a pair of buttes south of the Dark Canyon Wilderness that are visible for many miles. They’re known to Navajo people as the birthplace of the celebrated “Headman” Manuelito, who was known for resisting federal efforts to forcibly remove Navajos from the region.

Now it is some Navajos who are heading an indigenous campaign to create a National Conservation Area to protect 1.9 million acres encompassing the Bear’s Ears, Cedar Mesa, and more. The area stretches south from Canyonlands National Park to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and west from U.S. Highway 191 to the Colorado River.

The cultural resources here include hundreds of native rock structures preserved under ledges, countless petroglyphs, graves and lithic scatters. Indeed, the area includes one of the densest concentrations of archaeological sites in the Southwest. Several Four Corners tribes trace a direct connection to this area where their ancestors occupied the canyons and mountaintops.

But local Navajos and Utes are finding it increasingly difficult to protect these fragile traces from contemporary threats, which range from deliberate pot hunting and grave robbing to well-meaning recreational users who damage delicate artifacts and archaeological evidence.

If Bears Ears becomes an indigenous conservation area, existing uses would remain—but they would be more closely regulated. And there will be no future mineral leasing. The idea is that that would help protect an area with evidence of 12,000 years of human occupation well into the future.

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