This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Is it Native Americans who are pushing for a Bears Ears National Monument? According to retired educator Lewis Singer, "The Navajo people have given up enough of their tribal lands for national monuments," (The Salt Lake Tribune, July 27). The push for the monument dates to a meeting held in San Francisco a couple of years ago. (Deseret News, Aug. 5) The Intertribal coalition wasn't even formed until July 2015.

Is it perhaps then the environmentalists who are behind the push? If it is, they've been exceptionally successful. In the last 20 years, Uncle Sam has added or expanded at least 29 parks, wilderness, antiquities and monuments with more than 8 million more acres taken out of the public domain in the Colorado River watershed, and the 1.9 million acre Bears Ears is right in the middle of that basin.

If not the tribes and environmentalists, who then? Based on my 35 years as a detective investigating fraud, a supervisory criminal investigator, it is my suspicion that all this hoop-de-la is misdirection and slight-of-hand deception.

California's watershed contributes less than a thimbleful of water per barrel of river water. Yet for better than 100 years they have hogged the lion's share of the river, plus any more they could grab. Some East & West Coast liberals believe that we citizens of the Intermountain West are dumb as dirt. Some $20 million of the money behind Bears Ears came from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Menlo Park, Calif.; the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Los Altos, Calif.; and part of a $15.6 million grant from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Los Angeles, Calif.

The best way to keep stealing the water from the other six river basin states is to keep people, farmers, ranchers, loggers, miners, drillers, tourists, settlers and businesses out of the watershed. I suspect they have found the best way to do that is to enlist Uncle Sam in their cause.

Clark Larsen

Holladay