Autumn Gillard & Steve Bloch: Tribal Voices and the Fight to Save Grand Staircase - Escalante
Autumn Gillard & Steve Bloch: Tribal Voices and the Fight to Save Grand Staircase - Escalante  
Podcast: The Wild Idea
Published On: Tue May 05 2026
Description: In this episode, Bill and Anders are joined by Autumn Gillard, coordinator for the Grand Staircase Intertribal Coalition, and Steve Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), for a wide-ranging conversation about one of the most contested and celebrated landscapes in the American West: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Autumn brings a Southern Paiute perspective to the work, rooted in personal connection to ancestral land and galvanized by witnessing the vandalism of irreplaceable cultural sites. Steve brings 30 years of legal and conservation advocacy, including direct involvement in the monument's establishment in 1996 and the subsequent legal battles that followed.The conversation traces the full arc of the monument's history, from early twentieth-century preservation visions to the coal mining threat that catalyzed the 1996 designation, through the Trump administration's 2017 reduction of the monument boundaries and the Biden administration's 2021 restoration. Steve and Autumn explain how the collaborative management planning process that followed the restoration became an opportunity to elevate tribal voices in unprecedented ways, with coalition members sitting alongside elders without smartphones to hand-transcribe their knowledge into formal public comments. That process produced a management plan that now faces a new and potentially permanent threat: weaponized use of the Congressional Review Act by Representative Celeste Maloy and Senator Mike Lee.What emerges from this conversation is not despair but resolve. Autumn speaks with quiet power about carrying the weight of ancestral obligation and drawing strength from the land itself, preparing not for today's outcome but for seven generations forward. Steve lays out the legal landscape with clarity and urgency, while both guests leave listeners with a simple, actionable message: your voice matters, and raising it, whether by calling Congress or simply visiting the monument, is its own form of advocacy.Learn more about today's episode and find the links and resources mentioned at our website, thewildidea.com.