Caroline hosts Bill Hedden, Executive Director of the Grand Canyon Trust. (The wild lands of our collective soul in Utah have assumed human form to come tell us its story.) “Today, the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Uintah and Ouray Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute tribes have formally united to secure a presidential proclamation establishing a 1.9 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument… The five tribes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition have developed a visionary and workable plan for America’s first national monument that will be collaboratively managed by the tribes and the federal government. Their proposal envisions a world-class center for the integration of Native American traditional knowledge and western science at Bears Ears. The Coalition’s proposal has been favorably received by the White House and appointees in the Obama Administration at the departments of Interior and Agriculture.
Bill Hedden is the Executive Director of the Grand Canyon Trust. Under his leadership, the Trust has helped clean up emissions from the region’s coal fired power plants and remove radioactive wastes from the bank of the Colorado River. Hedden developed a leading program for reducing grazing damage on public lands, including purchasing two ranches covering 850,000 acres on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim. The organization has led in developing ecologically sensible forest restoration programs and is partnering with Colorado Plateau tribes to win designation of the first-ever Native American national monument at the Bears Ears in southeast Utah. Hedden has a B.A. and Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University.