I am writing this letter as your poll was taken down before I could vote in favor of the designation of Bears Ears as a national monument.
Why do I support this designation though I don’t live within a few miles of a place considered sacred to many? Because I understand that here in the West, we are all connected across state boundaries to vast sweeps of iconic beauty and lands sacred for thousands of years to the populations inhabiting them before Europeans arrived.
I understand that if I and others honor beauty, honor wild nature and do what we can to protect it to preserve it for future generations, we will show that what we have been given for free is appreciated.
And that once Bears Ears is crisscrossed more with roads and more ancestral sites and remains are violated, no one will ever be able to restore all the wild lives that have been and will be lost.
Carolyn Hopper
Bozeman, Mont.
