This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Outdoor retailers and Utah's political leaders are back at the poker table, and once again the Utahns are calling the retailers' bluff.

The people behind the twice-yearly trade shows announced Monday that they were putting out a request for proposals from other cities to host the shows, which bring $40 million to Utah annually. Justification for looking elsewhere was placed squarely on Utah politicians' efforts to reverse the new Bears Ears National Monument. Public lands being at the very heart of outdoor recreation, industry leaders see Utah's moves as both philosophically wrong and economically damaging.

But if Utah leaders are concerned about the retailers' show moving, they weren't letting on Monday.

"It's going to be tough for them to find as strong a venue," said Paul Edwards, Gov. Gary Herbert's spokesman.

That attitude comes from experience. Utah has been here before with the retailers, who have often sparred with our elected leaders over public lands. In a deliberative RFP process, Salt Lake City outshines other locales on many fronts, including in proximity to venues for product demonstrations and in lower cost nonunion labor. As such, the people who actually put on the show have sucked up the anti-environmental talk and kept it going here.

But on Tuesday morning, one of the crown jewels of the outdoor industry, Patagonia, said it's not coming to Utah anymore "because of the hostile environment they have created and their blatant disregard for Bears Ears National Monument and other public lands."

Patagonia is not waiting to see if the show moves elsewhere. It's simply not coming. Not this August for the next summer show, and not the following January for the winter show. Patagonia just said, "Adios," and it's encouraging others in the industry to join them.

If that happens, the RFP process and its careful deliberations may not be enough. This wouldn't be about a contract negotiation for future years. It would be a boycott, and the contract negotiation — if there is one — would happen against the backdrop of that boycott and its resulting publicity.

What would such a boycott do to Utah's recreation-products industry, a growing sector whose success depends on access to public lands? If companies like Petzl and Backcountry.com also decide Utah doesn't share their values, we will have lost much more than $40 million per year.

And all this risk does not come with any tangible reward. Utah politicians are going all out to kill the Bears Ears Monument, but there is no guarantee they will succeed. They have to overcome legal precedent to get a new president to reverse it, and so far they haven't even determined if the new president wants to do that.

And, even if it is reversed, the reversal will not produce any windfall for San Juan County or anyone else. There is no energy project or other development that was prevented by the monument declaration.

So we're risking millions of dollars that are already flowing into Utah to make a point about presidential overreach, and the alleged overreacher isn't even president anymore. Poker may not be our game.