This article originally appeared in ‘The Petroglyph‘ and is republished with permission

On July 15th Sally Jewell met with environmentalist and Native American leaders at the Bears Ears to talk about protecting the Bears Ears and the National Monument proposal.

KSL quoted Sally Jewell in a July 15th story.

“BEARS EARS, San Juan County — Interior Secretary Sally Jewell stood in a circle surrounded by leaders of five Native American tribes, medicine men and women, their children and families and spoke of the importance of the land.

She knelt down to touch a handful of dirt and said, like them, she is in the “forever business” of preserving heritage, traditions and landscapes for generations yet to come.

“Everybody recognizes this area is special,” said Jewell, in the middle of the Bears Ears meadows Friday. “There is nobody that I talk to that doesn’t want to see these areas protected for us, but also for their children and grandchildren.” 

The encampment at the Bears Ears was quit large and the media put out a lot of pictures of the event.

The one thing main stream media didn’t cover was the aftermath at the Bears Ears as a result of this event.  On Wednesday 20, 2016 just five days later the site of the gathering showed a lot of damage from vehicles driving off road to set up or take down the camp.  The ground was muddy at the time so the vehicles left ruts around the grass covered high country meadow.  Fire pits were left visible as if there was no thought to leave no trace camping.  At one camp melted aluminum cans were left in the dugout fire pit.

There was a row of ten port a potties still on the site.

There was not a lot of trash left behind besides a few cigarette butts, one or two bottle caps and a couple wrappers the main damage was caused by the vehicles driving off the road and the participants not practicing “Leave No Trace” when it came to campsites and fires.

With the Bears Ears site being left in such a poor condition by those who claim this area to be sacred and in need of federal protection its hard not to wonder if it wouldn’t be enough to just prevent these people as well as Sally Jewell from visiting the Bears Ears in the future?