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Environmental Decision-Making And Sense Of Place: Exploring The Effects Of Bears Ears' Shifting Status On Stakeholders' Personal Relationships To The Land, Ana Siegel

Summer Research

The aim of my summer research was to explore how sense of place is affected by environmental decision-making—whether that be on a local or federal level—examining Bears Ears, as a case study. Ever since the initial push—back in 2013—to designate Bears Ears as a National Monument, this landmark of the Four Corners Region represented a quarrel, familiar to the American Southwest: friction between those who wish to conserve Western landscapes for their sacred value, and those who would rather exploit those lands for their natural resource—and thus economic—potential. After years of advocacy and petitioning of the federal government, in 2016, …