The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance organization has released a statewide video focusing on a chaining plan, a practice the alliance describes as destructive, within Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Chaining is a practice of removing vegetation in large areas by linking a metal chain between two pieces of heavy machinery. While the machinery, such as a bulldozer, moves forward, it clears the area of any tree or bush.
The Bureau of Land Management calls it vegetation restoration and does this to create more land for cattle grazing.
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance created a video, which will air for three weeks on all of Utah’s major broadcasting networks.
The BLM is currently proposing chaining 13,000 acres in Grand-Staircase Escalante, which will clear areas of pinyon and juniper forests. Officials at the alliance say they are against chaining because of the fragile ecological and archeological resources in the national monument area.
