Daily Archives: January 10, 2017

New National Monument in the USA

On December 28, 2016 President Obama declared the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. There’s no website for it yet on NPS.gov, but some info is available at Wikipedia.

Boston Globe Big Picture: Bear Ears Buttes in Utah.

“Known as Bear Ears for the pair of purple buttes at the region’s center, the newly proclaimed 1.9 million-acre National Mounument will preserve a photographer’s checklist of high-desert drama: spires, bridges, canyons. Yet the region’s true distinction is not its topography, but its cultural significance; perhaps no place in America is as rich with ancient Native American sites as Bear Ears. In October 2015, a coalition of five Indian nations, including the Hopi, Ute, and Navajo, formally proposed the monument, attempting to preserve the parcel’s 100,000 archeological sites from ongoing looting and grave robbing. Last June, in a letter to President Obama, more than 700 archeologists endorsed the proposal, saying that looting of the area’s many ancient kivas and dwellings was continuing “at an alarming pace“ and calling Bear Ears “America’s most significant unprotected cultural landscape.“ “

(No typos added by me; the Boston Globe calls it Bear Ears instead of Bears Ears.)