Tourists and looters descend on Bears Ears as Biden mulls protections

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Tourists and looters descend on Bears Ears as Biden mulls protections

Interior Secretary Haaland visits Utah monument amid controversy over whether to restore boundaries shrunk by Trump

By Joshua Partlow
April 8, 2021 at 5:30 a.m. EDT

BLUFF, Utah — In the sandstone canyon where Vaughn Hadenfeldt once saw the bloody tracks of a mountain lion hauling off a mule deer, there are 1,000-year-old cliff dwellings decorated by rock paintings of bighorn sheep where one can still see the ancient footprint of an infant pressed into the wall.

A renowned wilderness guide with decades of experience exploring the Bears Ears area, Hadenfeldt has long argued that this austere landscape teeming with archaeological and cultural treasure in southeastern Utah should be viewed as an outdoor museum. And each time he visits, more of that treasure has been looted.

“Come on, people,” he muttered in disgust, as he scanned the sandy soil this week for pieces of painted pottery from the Ancestral Puebloan Indians that used to be so easy to find in this area. ... “This whole site was covered with beautiful pot shards,” he said. “I guess we’re just never going to stop people from pocketing this stuff.”

In the three years since President Donald Trump slashed the size of the Bears Ears National Monument by 85 percent, undoing protections established by President Barack Obama, the pressures on this area have only intensified, according to the residents and scientists who study it. The threats come in many forms — from roaring ATVs to uranium mining to coronavirus-weary tourists seeking outdoor adventure — on land that is considered sacred ground by several Native American tribes.

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Josh Partlow
Joshua Partlow is a reporter on the The Washington Post’s national desk. He has served previously as the bureau chief in Mexico City, Kabul, Rio de Janeiro, and as a correspondent in Baghdad. Follow https://twitter.com/partlowj