Through Executive Order on Monday July 13th, President Trump reduced Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument by a combined 3 million acres!
This attack on public lands opens iconic landscapes, ancestral homelands of Tribal Nations, and critical wildlife habitats to mining and other industrial development. Learn more from the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition statement.
Bikepacking Roots developed the Bears Ears Loops network in 2020 to celebrate the unique and monumental landscape and protections of Bears Ears National Monument and advocate for the preservation of the original monument boundaries after President Trump’s first reduction in 2017. The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument High Plateaus Loop community route showcases the spectacular landscape that inspired America’s largest National Monument.
Our goal has always been for bikepackers to be moved by riding in these places to become powerful advocates to protect them. Now is the time to make your opposition heard!
The maps below, created by our friends at Outdoor Alliance, show the monument reductions overlaid with our bikepacking routes and other recreation assets. They help put into perspective just what’s at stake as the current administration tries to open much of this land to mining, drilling and other industrial development.
Take Action!
- Demand your representatives oppose the dismantling of Bears Ears & Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments.
- Get out and explore these landscapes. Ride the Bears Ears Loops and Grand Staircase-Escalante High Plateaus Loop routes.
- Support Bikepacking Roots’ advocacy work by purchasing a Bears Ears Loops Guidebook (print or digital). This 95-page guidebook has chapters on the National Monument, the human history of the Colorado Plateau, and the geophysical and biological landscape of the area, in addition to all the logistical information you need to ride the route.
- Learn more about the impacts of mining in Southern Utah in this Radavist article by Bikepacking Roots’ Board Member Samantha Lewandowski.
Photo credit: Kurt Refsnider
