07/15/2026
With the recent reduction in the size of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments, we would like to help clear up a few misconceptions about monument designations, monument boundaries, and management plans.
The motorized recreation community's position has never been about opposing the protection of cultural sites, archaeological resources, fossils, wildlife, or sensitive landscapes. We support protecting those resources. What many of us have questioned is why protecting those resources requires massive landscape-wide designations, additional Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs), Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (LWCs), Primitive Zones, and other management prescriptions that affect roads, recreation access, dispersed camping, and motorized travel across huge areas.
In our view, the discussion should not be framed as "protection versus recreation." The real question is whether the restrictions being proposed are actually necessary to protect the resources being cited. That's why our comments focused so heavily on access, route networks, recreation opportunities, and the cumulative effect of these management designations during the planning process. We were asking for management plans that protect the resource while preserving reasonable public access—not plans that effectively treat access itself as the problem.
Simply put, we were never arguing against protection. We were asking where the line exists between protecting a resource and restricting an entire landscape. It is also important to understand that ACECs, LWCs, Primitive Zones, route designations, and many of the restrictions being debated today were not created by the monument proclamations themselves. Those came later through the Resource Management Plan process. From our perspective, many of those additional designations were unnecessary to achieve the stated purpose of protecting the resources for which the monuments were established.
The Antiquities Act was intended to protect important historic and cultural resources. We believe it should not be used as a substitute for congressional action to create de facto wilderness-style management over millions of acres through administrative planning. Whether others agree or disagree, that is the discussion we were trying to have throughout the planning process. Protect the resource. Preserve reasonable access. Have an honest conversation about where the line between the two should be.
Link to COHVCO & Others' original comments regarding the RMPs for the Bears Ears below -
https://1drv.ms/b/c/0B20ED6653EAF2C5/IQCyGbpUY36TRICFNOOS_Vc6Ab1atLp68VBi1zIHGYCWzLM?e=XESe5S
