Vaughn Hadenfeldt, wilderness guide and owner of Far Out expeditions, Bluff, Utah

“There was a lot of thought that went into creating the Bears Ears National Monument.”

DISPATCHES FROM MONUMENTAL AMERICA: A LISTENING TOUR Locals speak about the Trump administration’s review of Bears Ears National Monument and other monuments. Dig in to more stories here.

I n the past year Vaughn Hadenfeldt, a wilderness guide, has seen up close the workings of two very different Interior Department secretaries.

In July 2016, Hadenfeldt led a hike up a high bluff called Comb Ridge, named because of the canyons filled with ancient ruins that notch it, like a comb. His guests were then-Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and a gaggle of panting reporters.

In a few hours she would host a public meeting down in the stuffy community center in tiny Bluff, Utah, and she would extend her time in order to answer more questions from locals concerned about the proposed Bears Ears National Monument. But on this guided tour, where petroglyphs that had been vandalized would gaze back at her, Hadenfeldt asked a question. Would the artifact-rich valley called Cottonwood Wash be included in the monument?

Jewell responded with a question of her own. Was Cottonwood Wash slated for protection in the the Utah Public Lands Initiative? That initiative was a grand compromise, years in the making, that would have protected the Bears Ears region via an act of Congress in exchange for opening other lands for development. Utahn preservationists and industrialists had negotiated deals. But partisanship sabotaged the bill at the last hour. This prompted the executive branch to get involved. Hence Jewell put on her hiking boots.

Yes, Hadenfeldt told her. Cottonwood Wash would have been protected. He had been one of many who weighed in on the Public Lands Initiative.

He remembers that she answered, “I can’t imagine the Obama Administration would do less than the PLI boundary would.”

“Which made me feel really good at the time, now who knows what these new boundaries might entail?” Hadenfeldt said among the books and photographs inside the office of his guide business in Bluff.

“Yes, the Bears Ears is in San Juan County, but the Bears Ears is also public land and it’s owned by everybody.” -Vaughn Hadenfeldt

Hadenfeldt, who first visited the Bears Ears region in the early 1980s, and soon moved his outfitting business from his home state of Colorado to his adopted hometown of Bluff, had a very different sort of visit this year with Ryan Zinke, Jewell’s successor.

In a cordial but perfunctory 30 minute sit-down meeting in the town of Blanding, Utah, with no press invited, Zinke drilled him on a specific question: how many archaeological sites in Bears Ears National Monument have been recorded?

It was a loaded question. In order for an archaeological site to classify as “recorded,” a professional archaeologist must go in and document it, explained Hadenfeldt, who has studied archaeology. For decades the Bureau of Land Management has lacked the funds to employ enough archaeologists to thoroughly examine Bears Ears. But based on the distribution of recorded sites, plus knowledge of unrecorded ones, plus extrapolations based on the geography, topography and human migration routes, Hadenfeldt said that archaeologists have extrapolated that tens of thousands more sites exist within the current boundaries of the monument.

But if only the recorded sites count, then that could be used as justification to drastically shrink the borders of the monument.

Hadenfeldt guesses that the number of officially recorded sites inside Bears Ears National Monument are fewer than 10 percent of the whole.

“When he didn’t accept there were more archaeological sites than have been recorded, that was really tough for me, having an archaeological background,” Hadenfeldt said. “I was disheartened.”

It all amounted to a case study for Hadenfeldt into a contrast in management styles. One Interior Secretary was accessible, inquisitive and deferential to consensus. The other, curt, private and probing in service of an agenda.

The crisis is that while professionals lag in documenting the archaeological wonders of Bears Ears National Monument, amateurs are not. Hadenfeldt has seen on the internet detailed directions to sites that have not yet been officially documented. They are now extremely vulnerable to looting. This is why in 2011 he co-founded the preservation group Friends of Cedar Mesa to help plan how best to protect the cultural treasures in the Bears Ears region.

He worries that the monument review is a worst case scenario for Bears Ears. It hit the region with a monsoon of public attention, but has not come with the hoped-for added resources for better management. Hadenfeldt is still working with Friends of Cedar Mesa on contingency plans in case federal help never comes.

In the meantime, he still guides hikes, doing his part to educate people one-on-one. Recently, he had a repeat customer. Sally Jewell and her husband Warren started a cross-country road trip in the spring after she left her post. They wanted to to bask in some of the landscapes she had previously been too busy administering to enjoy. When the couple found out that Hadenfeldt was free for a few days, they rushed from New Mexico to Bluff. Hadenfeldt showed Jewell more ruins.

Only some of them were recorded.