Sportsmen’s Groups Will Challenge the Ban on Recreational Shooting at Bears Ears National Monument

On Thursday the BLM published a final management plan for Bears Ears National Monument that, among other things, prohibits recreational shooting on the 1.3-million-acre Utah property. Later that day, a coalition of sportsmen’s groups signaled its intent to sue the agency.

The Sportsmen’s Alliance announced that it is building a coalition of “organizations and individuals” to challenge the BLM’s rule in federal court. Bears Ears National Monument, located in southeast Utah, is jointly managed by the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service. It’s the first large-scale national monument to completely prohibit recreational shooting.

Related: Final Bears Ears National Monument Plan Bans All Recreational Shooting on 1.3 Million Acres of Federal Land

“No surprise here, BLM told everyone many months ago that the agency’s preferred alternative was to ban recreational shooting altogether,” says Dr. Todd Adkins, senior vice president of the Sportsmen’s Alliance.

A total ban on recreational shooting was listed as the preferred alternative in the draft Bears Ears Monument management plan that was released in March. Prohibiting target shooting and significantly curtailing off-highway vehicle travel were listed as measures to protect the significant Native American cultural sites and artifacts on the monument, according to the draft plan. (As we reported Thursday, there is a lack of documented conflict around recreational shooting and public safety or disturbance at cultural sites at Bears Ears.) The agency accepted public comments on its draft document through June 11.

“The notice and comment process proved meaningless” to prevent the preferred alternative from being finalized in the management plan that will guide monument activities through the next decade, says Adkins, “so we must turn to the courts to keep public land truly public.”

The agency received about 19,000 comments on the draft plan, BLM field manager Jake Palma told the San Juan Record this week. About 17,000 comments were described as form letters, with the remaining 2,000 offering unique, substantive comments.

The final plan is subject to a 30-day protest period that ends Nov. 4.

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Adkins says the Sportsmen’s Alliance and other groups that join the effort to judicially roll back the shooting restrictions will take action during the protest period.

“Federal law prohibits them from doing this,” says Adkins. “There are several statutes and pathways forward that we’re evaluating, but resolving this is clearly going to require legal action, which we’re prepared to take. We’re going to stop them and the federal courts are the answer.”