GRAND STAIRCASE-ESCALANTE: Photographs of a Monumental Landscape
Text: Andreea Lotak; Photos: Justin & Andreea Lotak · 6 min read
The boundaries of this national monument have been the subject of many complaints, but have also created one of the most beloved protected public lands. Two decades after its designation, the current president wants to carve out many hundreds of thousands of acres from the Grand Staircase-Escalante and split it into three different national monuments. Now the decision is going to court.
For a few days this fall we hiked, backpacked, drove and camped throughout the national monument, crisscrossing it from north to south in an attempt to witness its full beauty. At 1.88 million acres, it is the largest land-based monument designated through the Antiquities Act. Its size was the main subject of debate, with critics arguing that it doesn’t respect the clause of confining the monument to “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected”. As with the case of Bears Ears, Secretary Zinke spoke about the importance of identifying these objects of interest and then conserving them within several different monuments smaller in size. This idea of a mosaic of protected lands comes from an age where the mainstream understanding of ecology was more limited than it is today. Biological corridors that connect these areas are essential for the health of their ecosystems. The importance of those objects to be protected can be harmed if we surround them by developments, highways or mining projects. The large size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante protected a fluid landscape, where animals and plants could continue to migrate and adapt. The health of its ecosystem created the wild beauty that attracts so many to visit. The fact that this place remained almost unaltered throughout the century following European settlement was also because mining in such remote country required technology that didn’t exist at the time, but that is advancing now enough to make resource extraction economically viable. Its recent past doesn’t guarantee its future. That’s why it was protected.
After spending time in this vast landscape and speaking with people, we understood that beyond economic arguments, it’s also a question of cultural identities. Some of the descendants of European settlers remain distrustful of the federal government owning land in Utah, and some feel much more attached to the tradition of extractive industries that were established by their forefathers. On the other hand, this land’s existence was marked for much longer by a very different cultural approach: that of native tribes, whose artifacts are scattered all across Grand Staircase-Escalante and whose way of life didn’t significantly alter the natural environment. The photographs below are dedicated to them, and to the people whose vision and stewardship kept these lands beautiful and healthy, including some of the men and women who graze their cattle here consciously and know the land better than many. The legacy of all of them is currently threatened by those who represent the interest of a few and manipulate the cultural divisions among us.