> I was amused to visit Capitol Reef National Park and enjoy a tour of a small canyon where a boardwalk lets you see the names of some 19th century folk carved into a cliff face. Along the way were signs warning you of the criminal prosecution that would result if you carved your own name into the cliff.

That boardwalk is called the "Petroglyphs Trail", and it's there for ancient Native American art. Fixing the names of some people that carved their names near it would cause harm to the petroglyphs, so they opted to leave them instead of repair them. I feel like you're being intentionally misleading in completely omitting the fact that the boardwalk is there specifically for Anasazi Petroglpyhs.

> The abandoned houses across town are blight, but the one in Yosemite is a national treasure.

Care to share which house this is? Only information I could find was on the Bodie Ghost town, which is a historic mining town. Again, there's obvious cultural significance to an old gold rush town that is not present in some abandoned craftsmen in the inner city.

> My child's mud hut is a safety hazard, but the one up the cliff is a sacred Anasazi artifact

Really? Do you really not see the difference?

> On the other hand, I have seen a small local wilderness area turn from a fun spot for a family Easter egg hunt to a regional ATV attraction so crowded the local Boy Scouts could no longer camp there.

Which is exactly what a National Monument designation protects.

> Balancing the past, present, and future is always a subjective thing. When the BLM actually does its job, it does land management. But that is a hard job. It is often easier to just close everything down and not let anyone in. That is not management. But when pressure on a wilderness grows from a couple hundred visitors a year to a couple hundred visitors a day, a policy of "anything goes" is also not management. Management can be expensive.

This is literally the opposite of what National Monument land does. They're not "closed down." They're actually far more accessible for generations, just not by way of vehicles that cause massive destruction.

> The people in the best position to observe and propose solutions are always local. But BLM struggles to build local partnerships. They try to manage through a multi-layered bureaucracy that ultimately makes decisions from Washington, D.C. The result can often look like the United Airlines video--constructing and enforcing a policy in a manner that doesn't fit the local situation. There are any number of ideas that could get the job done cheaper and with more sensibility.

Can you cite some sources for that? Let's look at Utah, which is at the center of the National Monument controversy. Yuba Lake, a state park, is an absolute disaster of motorhomes, ATVs, and speedboats. Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Arches and Zion, all federal land, have all maintained a large percentage of their natural beauty and cultural significance. What exactly would the state do better with those lands?

Edit: I also want to bring up Goblin Valley, one of the more popular state parks in Utah. It's $13 for day-use access to 3500 acres. Grand Staircase, on the other hand, is 1.8 MILLION acres, free day use, and arguably far more fragile and spectacular.