From Dinosaur to Bears Ears

Abstract

Public land debates remain central to American political discourse given tensions between proponents of economic development and conservation ethos. How do we inform students about these debates and empower them as stakeholders in the future of American conservation? We teach an interdisciplinary course on public lands where engaging with the public participation process of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a central learning objective. We compare the 1950s Echo Park Dam controversy in Dinosaur National Monument with the highly structured and contentious effort to create Bears Ears National Monument. At the heart of the course is a three-day trip to Dinosaur, where students participate in field-based activities that help them situate and apply class discussions within real-world contexts. We seek to invest our students in places like Dinosaur and Bears Ears while bringing the realization that finding compromise among diverse stakeholders is a complicated enterprise. Students leave the course with varied opinions about the future of conservation and public lands management, and the interdisciplinary and experiential dimensions of the course empower them to voice those views publicly and effectively, facilitating the transfer of decision-making power to our students as informed stakeholders in a complex political process.