Interior Secretary Sally Jewell answers Utah monument fears

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said flatly she doesn't control President Barack Obama's pen when it comes to any new monument designation in Utah, but she insists there's no plan to sneak around Utah and create one under the "cloak of darkness." "There hasn't been any monument designation that President Obama has done that hasn't had a pretty open, public process," Jewell said. "It is an open, transparent process we have been engaged in all along." Jewell, in Salt Lake City for a Thursday announcement of a youth initiative with Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker, met with the editorial board of Deseret Media Companies on Wednesday to discuss sage grouse, monuments and other Interior department issues. Her presence in the state has been accompanied by a swirl of angst by Utah's top politicians that a monument designation in Utah is a just an ink stroke away and comes the same day a much-touted Public Lands Initiative was flayed by Native American tribes. "Despite more than two years of dialogue with local stakeholders, we are concerned that the Public Lands Initiative Process and San Juan County have thus failed to reach out to, consult and respond to feedback from Tribes within or outside of Utah," a letter from leaders of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition reads. Their letter late Wednesday was a rebuttal to one sent earlier in the day by Utah's entire congressional delegation to Jewell that implored her to let that process play out and refrain from any designation for Bears Ears, an area which spans 1.9 million acres in San Juan County.  But Jewell said she has yet to see any details of the Public Lands Initiative being shepherded by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah. "We have not seen anything tangible," she said. "We have asked for detail, because we have seen no detail." She said it is hard to say the process should play out when she does not know what it entails. "What is really going to be important is to show us, bring us to the table. We do have a lot of lands that are involved in this, but we need to be brought to the table," she said. "We are going to continue to get requests from people who are worried about these lands." Native American tribes pushing for protections of Bears Ears have been in her office, with maps, pushing their cause, she said. Bishop said he hasn't shown any details to Jewell because the language in his bill — that includes all the land use proposals — is still being crafted. "A soon as it is drafted we will share it with her," he said. "What is slowing it down right now is the mechanics of actually drafting the language and getting the maps ready."...more