While Utah politicians work to prevent President Barack Obama from designating new national monuments in the state, a Republican couple in Salt Lake City say it’s time for their party to think again.
Philip and Sarah Carlson are trying to organize a chapter of the national Republicans for Environmental Protection, and they believe a new study about the economics surrounding 17 Western national monuments shows that their party’s leaders have it wrong.
A report by Montana-based Headwaters Economics reviewing job and income growth after monument designations finds that they are universal job creators. That goes for Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante, whose job and income growth far have outpaced the population of Garfield and Wayne counties, and for one New Mexico monument that saw losses reversed after designation.
“The place we spend the most time when we’re outdoors is Arches [National Park],” Philip Carlson said in a Tuesday presentation to The Salt Lake Tribune’s editorial board, noting that Republican President Herbert Hoover used the Antiquities Act to create the monument that preceded the park. “I’m sure glad we’ve got it, and we don’t have an oil rig going up behind Delicate Arch.”
Asked about the closed prospect of coal mining at Grand Staircase-Escalante, the couple said it’s unclear how much that would have helped the economy, but it’s certain the benefits would have been temporary.
“We can’t recapture a destroyed Arches or Escalante,” Sarah Carlson said, though the tourism boost from monuments and parks is permanent.
In his prepared opening statement for a Tuesday hearing on bills meant to limit presidential authority to create monuments, Bishop said the administration’s apparent desire to protect more lands comes at an especially bad time.
“America is in the midst of a recession with elevated unemployment,” he said, “yet the Obama administration continues to push a ‘wilderness agenda’ that competes with our national priorities of job creation and domestic energy independence.”
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