The case for the public lands initiative.

• Author: Christensen, Lisa
• Position: Bears Ears

Many of those against the idea of making Bears Ears a national monument are instead in favor of a long-awaited bill, the Public Lands Initiative (PLI), recently introduced to Congress by Rep. Rob Bishop, which would affect areas across the state, and, in particular, the Eastern and Southeastern portions of Utah, with an eye toward both conservation and economic development.

In that regard, the initiative is about far more than Bears Ears.

"Bears Ears is one small element of it, but it's one that has captured a great deal of media print," Bishop says.

Bears Ears was hardly the overriding purpose of the bill when Bishop began crafting the PLI three years ago, he says. Instead, the initiative was inspired by the often-frustrating clash between businesses, communities and government in the eastern portion of the state--companies want to come and invest in the area, and communities want and need them there, but there is currently no way to guarantee access to some areas. One company, for example, can't get permits to have power lines cross federal land, Bishop says.

In order to ensure the bill would serve all interested parties fairly, Bishop has had more than 1,200 meetings held since 2013 for the initiative, inviting communities, business executives, ranchers, members of American Indian tribes and others to participate. The PLI itself would encompass 18 million acres of federal land across seven Eastern Utah counties, 4.6 million of which would be set aside for conservation and 1.15 million for new recreation or economic development opportunities, including 18,779 acres for an expansion to Arches National Park.

The goal of the PLI is to give some stability, a final word, he says, to the use of land, with a four-to-one ratio of land use for conservation and recreation, respectively. With specific designations for land use, developers, communities and ranchers can plan for the future and invest in business, tourism and grazing operations confidently.

This is especially important for a region that generally feels distrustful of the federal government--the designation of the Grande Escalante Staircase as a National Monument, which restricted many from grazing or other activities that had been carried on for generations, still smarts two decades later.

"I see some people from the development community, grazing community, who have been deceived in the past and don't trust us to make anything permanent," says Bishop. "We're trying to do things that...