Letter: Speak up for our public lands — they are irreplaceable

Kane County Commissioner Lamont Smith misunderstands the nature of Grand Staircase-Escalante when he thinks “people can’t get to or see” (The Tribune, March 31) the 1.9 million acres of the original national monument. Nearly a million annual visitors, of course, prove him wrong.Grand Staircase is a BLM-managed national monument, not a unit of the National Park Service. In both its original extent and in President Trump’s misguided downsized versions, the monument remains