Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities


** Utah leaders pick another legal fight instead of embracing public lands
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Monday, September 12, 2022
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. Photo: BLM Utah Flickr ([link removed])

The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board is fed up with Utah's latest attempt to pick a legal fight over public lands, ([link removed]) calling out the state legislature and attorney general for "spending millions of taxpayer dollars on pointless political performance art."

Utah's leaders recently announced ([link removed]) a challenge to President Biden's restoration of the original boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments as well as the Antiquities Act itself, the law that gives presidents the authority to designate national monuments. While previous legal decisions ([link removed]) have upheld the Antiquities Act as giving presidents the authority to protect areas for historic, natural, or geologic significance, the editorial board is concerned that a challenge to the law that reaches the U.S. Supreme Court could threaten this long-held precedent ([link removed]) .

Instead of a costly effort to fight the use of the Antiquities Act in court, the Tribune editorial board is urging Utah's leaders to be active partners in the management of public lands within its borders ([link removed]) "for the benefit of local residents, our Indigenous neighbors, wildlife, and future generations."
Quick hits


** Mark Udall: The gray wolf is not a trophy to be hunted
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Colorado Sun ([link removed])


** Conserve groundwater, fallow farmland, increase dust?
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High Country News ([link removed])


** BLM director outlines plan for fully staffing Western headquarters
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Grand Junction Daily Sentinel ([link removed])


** Utah leaders pick another legal fight instead of embracing public lands
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Salt Lake Tribune ([link removed])


** Congress considers adding lynching sites to National Park System in attempt to reckon with history
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Iowa Capital Dispatch ([link removed])


** The working-class loggers who saved an old growth forest
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In These Times ([link removed])


** Forest Service to better heed drought conditions before prescribed burns following tragedy in New Mexico
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Source NM ([link removed])


** Opinion: Reform oil and gas rules before allowing new leases
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Santa Fe New Mexican ([link removed])
Quote of the day
” The threats to these irreplaceable landscapes are very real, but so are the options for protecting them. We urge President Joe Biden, his administration and Congress to implement meaningful reforms of the federal oil and gas program before any new leasing is authorized. America’s heritage is at stake.”
—Michael Murray, Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks and Paul Reed, Archaeology Southwest, Santa Fe New Mexican ([link removed])
Picture this


** @USFWSRefuges ([link removed])
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As monarch butterflies make their fall migration southward to Mexico, milkweed – the plant on which they heavily rely – is going to seed. Many of those seeds will germinate in time for the monarchs' northward spring migration. [link removed] ([link removed]) . Photo: @USFWS ([link removed]) photos

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