The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology released a statement concerning the Bears Ears National Monument and its import to the scientific community, back in December. They pointed out that Bears Ears has yet to be comprehensively studied but as a site it offered up the potential for some great discovery.
Bears Ears National Monument was established only last December, 2016, following a long history of advocating by Native American tribes, conservationists, and scientists. Bears Ears is in the southwestern part of Utah near the Four Corners area. While paleontological research has been carried out there for more than 90 years, the short time that Bears Ears has enjoyed monument status means that it has not yet been as extensively studied as GSE NM. Nevertheless, Bears Ears has the potential to be as paleontologically spectacular as Grand Staircase. Bears Ears is stratigraphically older. Extensive exposures of the Pennsylvanian- and Permian-aged Cutler Group preserve some of the oldest terrestrial vertebrates, as well as highly fossiliferous sites that document vertebrate ecosystems before the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. The Triassic-Jurassic transition is especially well preserved in the Red Canyon and Indian Creek parts of the Monument, and the Jurassic sections near Monticello and Blanding, Utah have produced many important finds, including the prosauropod Seitaad.
They released this statement to point out that the Trump-proposed “cuts” to Bears Ears National Monument could be devastating to scientists. An Indiana University paleontologist was interviewed by Science around the same time, about how this could logistically affect scientific pursuits and discovery. Trump’s proposal cuts away tons of federal land that could be used by scientists for study and the public and the Native Americans, whose claim to the land goes far back before Donald Trump’s grand ancestor sold his soul to the devil. On top of the actually areas being taken away from the public in order to line the pockets of private interests, there are other far-reaching consequences of what is being proposed by this administration across the board.
As of 2009, there is a congressional act called the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act, which affects almost all federal land. It does protect vertebrate fossils, making it illegal to collect them unless you have a scientific permit. Fossils that are collected have to go into a public repository, because they remain the property of the U.S. government. So there certainly will still be protection at that level even outside the monument.
But several things are lost: First, in the monument paleontology had priority over other uses. [But on BLM lands managed for multiple uses,] if there’s another competing use the paleontology does not necessarily hold sway. An extreme example would be mining—if mining wins out, then the fossils can be destroyed. Second, the monument is better staffed, so it’s harder for someone to sneak in illegally and take things, whereas on ordinary BLM land it’s much less well policed.
Third, in national monuments where paleontology is one of the designated resources, there’s a whole special funding stream for research. A lot of the work that has been done at Grand Staircase has essentially been a public-private partnership. The funding through the monument has really made the science there blossom; we would not have seen the level or number of finds there over the last 20 years had that not existed. For example, you may have seen recently there was a new, almost complete tyrannosaur skeleton found in Grand Staircase and it was helicoptered out. The resources that go into things like helicopter support will be lost to researchers whose sites are now outside [the monument].
On Thursday, the Wilderness Society released a statement about how incredible recent findings at Bears Ears National Monument have been and how detrimental it would be to lose the land to destructive private resource extraction interests. Rob Gay is the lead paleontologist on a team.
“Based on our small, initial excavation, we believe that this 63-meter (69-yard) site may be the densest area of Triassic period fossils in the nation, maybe the world. If this site can be fully excavated, it is likely that we will find many other intact specimens, and quite possibly even new vertebrate species,” said Gay, whose team’s 2017 dig was funded by a grant from a special Bureau of Land Management (BLM) program that funds such research on national monuments and other national conservation lands. This funding could be at risk now that the excavation site has been removed from protections due to President Trump’s legally-disputed proclamation to shrink Bears Ears National Monument by more than one million acres. [...]
“Within the paleontology community, the size of this site and the potentially large number of specimens buried there represent an extraordinary opportunity to expand our knowledge of species that lived during the Triassic period,” said Tracy J. Thomson, coordinator of the WAVP conference. “There is an incredible amount of work yet to be done and we hope that paleontological sites like this one will get the protection they need before more of our prehistoric past is forever lost to looting or irreplaceably damaged by mining in the region.”
The Koch-led Republican movement to privatize our federal lands for “resource extraction,” has the potential to do away with all of that history. Millions and millions of years of history.