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Outdoor Retailer Show Will Have "Countdown Clock" Protesting Bears Ears Shrinkage

Nicolas Boullosa
/
Creative Commons
The Patagonia company headquarters in Ventura, California. The Patagonia company, which will attend the Outdoor Retailer show, has supported the Bears Ears Monument since before its original designation in 2016

As the lucrative Outdoor Retailer show swings into gear Thursday in Denver, a group of outdoor industry leaders and conservation organizations plans to project a “countdown clock” on the McNichols Civic Center to protest President Trump’s decision to reduce the size of two national monuments in southern Utah. The clock shows the time remaining before mining and energy interests will be able to dig and drill in the lands removed from monument status. The Outdoor Retailer show moved this year to Colorado from its longtime home in Utah because of differences with that state’s leaders over public-lands management. In a statement, Patagonia vice president of environmental activism Lisa Pike Sheehy said in less than two weeks, “the extractive industry will gain privileged access” to the two monuments, while ordinary citizens could see these lands made off limits.

Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.
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