Patagonia Has a New Message about Public Lands

Patagonia is definitely NOT done fighting for America's public lands we so cherish. Max Ritter photo.

A few months ago, we first reported on President Trump rolling back protections on Utah’s national monuments. At that point, it was still officially unclear as to what his motivations were for gutting nearly two million acres from our public land, but talk was rampant about the fact that there may be reserves of coil, oil, gas, and uranium buried beneath the orange desert landscape. Several major outdoor retailers, including Patagonia and REI, used their homepages to run awareness campaigns surrounding the public lands issue.

Yesterday, Patagonia once again updated their homepage to include the words: The President Stole Your Land and You Were Lied To”

Well, turns out those speculations about natural resources were true. After the release of hundreds of pages of documents thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, it became clear that these lands contain fuels after all. The documents are littered with references to the fact that extraction companies knew of this and pushed lobbying money towards a campaign to skew public perception away from it.

For example, as broken down by resource:

A breakdown of where it all is. Patagonia image.

11.4 billion tons: The estimated amount of recoverable coal contained in the Kaiparowits Plateau, which is situated in the heart of the original Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It’s the biggest coalfield in Utah and one of the largest in the country.

“The Kaiparowits plateau, located within the monument, contains one of the largest coal deposits in the United States,” says an Interior Department memo, issued in the spring of 2017.

90,000 acres: The number of acres of new oil and gas leases that the industry has expressed interest in along the eastern boundary of the original Bears Ears National Monument.

500,000 tons: The amount of increased production of uranium mining over the next 20 years in and around the original Bears Ears National Monument if new permits and expanded operations are allowed. This could particularly impact the Navajo Nation’s drinking water reserves, which have already been contaminated by over 500 uranium mines left on their lands.