Living Rivers, a Moab-based conservation group, flew reporters and local business owners of Vernal over the Dinosaur National Monument and John Wesley Powell National Conservation Area.
Living Rivers advocates to preserve and restore the Colorado River and the Colorado Plateau.
“Dinosaur is the crown jewel of northeast Utah in terms of really special lands,” said Cody Perry, a representative for Living Rivers.
Perry said the group is interested in Dinosaur National Monument because of key waterways, such as the Yampa, Green, and White rivers.
The Yampa and Green rivers are both important parts of the Colorado River watershed’s Upper Basin. They flow partially through Dinosaur National Monument, giving life to the various types of deer, elk, and plants that live there.
“We engage around maintaining river health, maintaining the ecology of rivers, a naturally flowing river regime itself, and we also engage a lot in public land issues,” Perry said.
“The John Wesley Powell National Conservation Area is a really good example and a case study, I think, for what can be done in our current environment, especially with the pressure that is being put on a lot of our national monuments," said Charlie Luke, The Wilderness Society's Utah state director.
That pressure is being put on national monuments established by the Antiquities Act of 1906, which gave presidents the ability to create national monuments on federal land. It was recently used by President Donald Trump to significantly reduce the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments.
Dinosaur National Monument was established through the Antiquities Act and is managed by the National Park Service.
The John Wesley Powell National Conservation Area was created by Congress through the John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management and Recreation Act and is managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
It was established through legislation that any major changes to its boundaries or protections would generally have to go through Congress to be approved.
“And so, you know, right now, that's where I think the protections here are very, very important, especially with the proximity to a lot of the oil and gas extraction that are currently taking place in the Uinta Basin,” Luke said.
Luke said that The Wilderness Society is watching for mineral leasing in these monuments to make sure they stay protected.
