The Colorado Plateau contains perhaps the largest contiguous unprotected wilderness lands remaining in the lower 48 states.  In 1991, Round River’s first support came from Clarke Abbey and the estate of Edward Abbey.  Correspondingly, our first proposed conservation project was in the La Sal Mountains and canyons of Abbey’s Desert Solitaire.  Since then we have immersed ourselves in conservation work around the world, but have always pondered how to bring the conservation lessons we have learned back home. This work began again in 2007.

Utah Indigenous Landscapes Project

Round River is partnering with Native American Tribes throughout southern Utah, to help achieve conservation across one of the largest remaining unprotected wildernesses in the continental United States.  Native people in Utah have long been the stewards of this land, and continue to hold strong ties to their surrounding environment. Many of Utah’s indigenous people continue to rely on undeveloped lands in the Intermountain West to meet their cultural, spiritual, economic, and subsistence needs. Because of this, the landscape represents a vast collection of indigenous sacred sites and culturally important areas. Furthermore, these lands hold great ecological value, as they remain largely undeveloped.

Despite each tribe’s strong and ongoing connection to these lands, there is a widespread lack of indigenous input in land-use planning. Very little communication between tribal and federal, state, or county governments exists, and indigenous views are often left out of management decisions. This problem is further compounded by the bitter history amongst these groups, resulting in a lack of trust between tribes and other government agencies. This lack of communication results in those who are most vested in the land having the least amount of input in its future.

To change this dynamic, Round River has partnered with Utah Tribes to advocate for their interests and rights on ancestral lands. Our initial efforts focus on interviewing elders and leaders, mapping cultural resources and sacred places, and facilitating the creation of a Utah Tribes Cultural Resource Protection Plan. We are working directly with the individual tribes most affected by county planning efforts and other development interests, including the Paiute Tribe of Utah, the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute, and the Utah Navajo, as well as the Utah Tribal Leaders Association. This work is intended to facilitate the creation of a vision for the future, specific to each tribe, which can be used as a means of representing the interests of Utah’s indigenous people in land use planning.

International conservation groups have long recognized the pivotal role indigenous people can play in conservation. Round River’s experience has demonstrated that effective engagement and the use of data and tools developed with tribes are powerful means for asserting indigenous rights and interests while advancing conservation outcomes. We feel that by assisting the indigenous people of Utah in creating these tools and data, Round River can help to achieve meaningful conservation, by giving a voice to those who care most about the land.

Several counties in southern Utah (including Iron, Millard, Emery, Wayne, and Grand) are at various stages in considering creating legislative bills to resolve wilderness protection and land use at the local level. San Juan, Beaver, and Piute County all began receiving public comments in early 2010 and these processes are moving forward independently. Each tribe has extensive interests in each of these counties and have demonstrated their ability to influence legislation as evidenced by the Washington County Lands Bill passed in April 2009. The Shivwits Band of the Paiute Tribe played a critical role in defeating a more development-oriented version of this bill, and eventually lent their support to a stronger conservation bill and influenced its passage.

As the stewards of Utah’s diverse landscapes, the tribes recognize that land conservation directly contributes to their own cultural preservation, which strengthens their people. Despite a long and difficult history, many tribal communities have maintained their strong connection to Utah’s undeveloped wilderness. Still others are experiencing a period of rebirth; as they seek to reassert their connection to the land that has always been their home. Round River is excited to assist Utah’s native people in advocating for the protection of wild lands across the Colorado Plateau. We believe that this partnership between conservationists and tribes will lead to a gradual, but permanent shift, ultimately resulting in more resilient ecological communities as well as stronger human communities.

Project Background

In 1991, Round River’s first support came from Clarke Abbey and the estate of Edward Abbey.  Correspondingly, our first proposed conservation project was in the La Sal Mountains and canyons of Abbey’s Desert Solitaire. Since then we have immersed ourselves in conservation work around the world, but have always pondered how to bring the conservation lessons we have learned back home. This work began again in 2007.

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of conservation planning in the region has been the lack of input from and collaboration with indigenous and rural populations. Presently, conservation proposals are viewed as originating from urban people concerned primarily with their own recreation pursuits, resulting in little local buy-in for conservation proposals and, therefore few successful designations or management changes have been secured. Given our profile as a science and student-based organization, Round River brings a unique approach that blends science and community engagement to build local constituency support.

Round River has more than fifteen years of experience working with indigenous groups and has the tools and skills to make their participation meaningful from both an ecological and cultural perspective. Our involvement with Utah tribes thus far has included a cooperative mapping project of ancestral lands (see Google Earth maps), the successful protection of a 3,000-year-old village site along the Jordan River in Salt Lake County. (See news article “Herbert hands tribes a big win”.)

We are currently assisting the Utah Navajo, the Paiute Tribe of Utah, and the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute in land planning efforts aimed at identifying opportunities and methods to protect their interests across these landscapes for generations to come.  The Utah Navajo continue to be ignored and left out of economic development opportunities by the local government in San Juan County as well as by the Navajo Nation despite the tremendous wealth in oil revenues, which has been extracted from their lands over the past 75 years. This project is aimed at assisting the Utah Navajo in creating a vision for the long- term protection and use of these lands. The Goshute Tribe is threatened by a massive water pumping project which could dewater the springs and aquifers over thousands of square miles of arid lands in Utah and Nevada for the purpose of building more suburbs in Las Vegas. The Paiute Tribe of Utah has prioritized the restoration of their land, water, and culture following a failed assimilation experiment carried out by the US government which first wiped out, then restored federal status to the tribe in 1958 and 1980. Each of these efforts requires a long-term investment of time and resources, but given the patience and persistence tribes have demonstrated throughout history, we have great hope they will ultimately persevere.