I think we will still be allowed to camp next to the drilling rigs, so no problem, right? ;)
And I hear they are going to change the name of the area to "Deaf Bear," since they just cut off the ears. ;)
Seriously, though, litigation is already pending, so who knows what will really happen in the end.
And as much as I wish that the monument would remain intact for non-industrial use, we have to remember that the local folks are overwhelmingly in favor of shrinking the size of the monument. Their wishes are not trivial. The counter-argument is that the monument belongs to the whole country, rather than the few thousand residents of Washington and Kane counties in Utah.
Finally, a perhaps-fruitless plea for civility: we can disagree with one another about the proper disposition of the land in Southern Utah without engaging in personal attacks. A robust political debate is a wonderful thing. Name-calling is much less likely to result in consensus.
