Dear Melissa,
Red-rock hoodoos thrust skyward over a labyrinth of serpentine mini-canyons. Living desert stretches to the escarpment of horizon thirty miles distant. In a crack below, I slide down the eight-story fissure of air compressed between two sculpted walls. At the bottom of this sandstone wormhole, I rejoin my friends, our unfettered yelps echoing aloft with gratitude for this adventure, this life, this slickrock country.
This is Utah's Greater Canyonlands. Join me in calling on President Obama to permanently protect this national treasure by naming it as a national monument.
Encompassing Canyonlands National Park, Greater Canyonlands comprises 1.8 million acres of the massive and the sublime: cosmic openness and mind-wrinkling geophysics, as well as delicate fern-lined seeps and pre-Pyramid pictographs. Unique in the world, Greater Canyonlands is terra Americana, the defining landscape of the West that called forth our courage, ruggedness, and ingenuity.
My passion for the Canyonlands became famous through 127 Hours, the Oscar-nominated film about my six-day entrapment. Today, not least for my experience in Blue John Canyon, red sand is forever embedded in my spirit. I'm humbled to be an ambassador for the Greater Canyonlands in the hope that future generations can create their stories among the sensual orange canyons, frog-lined pools, and split-crack spires of the red-rock.
Still, Greater Canyonlands is under attack. Profiteering corporations want to melt tar sands for dirty oil, frack for gas and mine for uranium. If their march of destruction reaches Greater Canyonlands, they will literally rip apart the land, pollute the region's rivers and streams, and displace bears and bighorn sheep that thrive there. Decidedly, the impacts go beyond the southwest -- burning the fuels extracted from the Canyonlands further contributes to climate change.
This outrageous tragedy-in-the-making wouldn't just destroy one of our most special wild places -- it would also undermine the Greater Canyonlands' beauty that drives local economic growth and creates long-term jobs around the region.
But there's hope. With the stroke of a pen, President Obama could permanently protect Greater Canyonlands as a national monument. Tell President Obama to stand up for the Greater Canyonlands.
While I have a special connection to the red rock country, it's not the only piece of our national heritage at stake right now. Across the nation, Big Oil, Gas, and Coal are trying to drill, mine, and frack countless pristine landscapes. Sierra Club and its allies are calling on President Obama to step up and establish a legacy in his second term as a president who stands for wild places, not big corporations. Protecting the Greater Canyonlands is an important step towards this legacy.
Thank you for helping to ensure Greater Canyonlands stays wild, for now and forever,
Aron Ralston
On Behalf of Sierra Club
P.S. We want to show President Obama how many Americans want him to permanently protect national treasures like Utah's Canyonlands. Forward this email to your friends and family, or share the alert on Facebook and Twitter by clicking the buttons below:
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