Grand Canyon Wildlands Council

08/08/2025

Two years ago today was a really special day for Havasupai, Grand Canyon, and so incredibly much more, right! Grand Canyon River Guides

Two years ago today, the U.S. took a long-overdue step to protect sacred land when it designated Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument.

These are not just beautiful landscapes — they are sacred homelands. They are places of ceremony, prayer, and history for Tribal Nations who have cared for them since time immemorial.

Read more: https://narf.org/cases/ancestral-footprints-monument/

04/08/2023

Coyote Tails 5: "Rumble on The Mountain"
Despite the adamant opposition (and lawsuits) of 13 affiliated tribes with the San Francisco Peaks, in 2012, the Arizona Snowbowl became the first ski resort in the world to use 100% reclaimed sewer water to make artificial snow. On Sunday, November 30th, 2014, when the Snowbowl opened its season with artificial snow, a 4.7 earthquake shook the city of Flagstaff and the surrounding area. Many people of the region considered the tremor to be the mountain's reaction to its desecration. With the Leading of Jah, and the help of Grand Canyon Trust, The Sierra Club - Grand Canyon (Arizona) Chapter, The Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, The Noise, KUYI Hopi Public Radio, Radio Free Flagstaff, and a wild pack of Irie Howlerz, Tha 'Yoties and the Rumble Team planned for the first annual Rumble on The Mountain (named for the earthquake) to be held at the The Orpheum Theater on January 24, 2015. The show would be eight hours of magic featuring music, prayers, and education in celebration of the sacred gift of water with Pato Banton as the featured performer/prayer warrior. Viktor Frankl said, "You don't invent your mission (in life), you detect it." Through Rumble on The Mountain, Tha 'Yoties came face to face with their mission of "Howling for the people and lands of the Colorado Plateau". \m/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_egiSjLwYbs

08/12/2020

'...The coronavirus pandemic has also hampered outreach about the Big Canyon project, Bilagody said. Normally, she and others would be educating people in person, but not now.

If more Navajo people knew the Big Canyon project would take groundwater and risk harming the land, Bilagody said, they’d be against it – just like they were in the years-long anti-Escalade fight.

“It’s the same land … it’s still sacred to us,” she said. “This is really a matter of life and death.”'

Developers want to build a vast hydroelectric power facility that would flood sacred lands, threaten waterways and put habitats at risk

05/22/2020

We should be supporting the Havasupai people and Navajo Nation. Please don't make Grand Canyon your weekend destination unless you already live there.

05/22/2020

While some national parks have wide-open spaces and plenty of room for visitors to spread out, the Canyon have spaces where people congregate. That's risky.

05/19/2020

'National Parks are opening their gates again, but is it safe?

House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Raúl M. Grijalva doesn’t think so, and he wrote a letter to Department of the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and National Park Service Deputy Director David Vela expressing his concerns on Friday.'

A big concern for Grand Canyon and the Navajo Nation in the context of the severe health crisis in northern Arizona

“Evidently, the safeguards the NPS has implemented to protect employee and visitor safety at reopened sites are wholly insufficient to protect public health.”

03/08/2020

"Just last week, a team published a paper in Science showing that the Colorado’s flow is projected to diminish another 20 to 30 percent by the middle of the century, ratcheting up the pressure on every single user of the river water and intensifying the need to develop new, innovative solutions. Currently, the seven states that rely on Colorado River water are discussing ways to reduce their usage, both to deal with the fact that the river has been significantly overdrawn for years and to come up with a plan to adapt to a drier future."

We work together as stakeholders with the 7 Basin States on the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Workgroup. Our supporters and the public in general are welcome to all of the associated meetings of this 'FACA' group, where one can hear detailed presentations on the complex interrelated systems of the Colorado River and the dam. At the meetings you can learn more and contribute your ideas to help create collaborative solutions. This kind of conservation work requires first rate information and a foundation of respect and trust, which give us the space to advise good stewardship decisions. Coming to Flagstaff in April...

In some western river basins, over 50 percent of the water goes to cattle feed, fodder for cows that end up as burgers in major U.S. cities. To save rivers, scientists suggest paying farmers to not farm.