Letter | Supports conservation plan

As someone in their 20s studying Parks and Recreation Management, I often read about the conservation champions of our past. Muir, Leopold, Audubon and others led us to major successes in conservation.

What is not talked about as often are the failures in this movement.

Glen Canyon was described as the Colorado River’s most beautiful work of art, more beautiful than all of the cathedrals in Europe. The canyon died in 1963 with the completion of the Glen Canyon Dam. Every inch of beauty upstream for 186 miles was drowned and coated in sediment.

Nowadays, I can only read and look at images of what used to be. I feel tremendous loss that such beauty has been deprived from myself and the rest of humanity. As our lands diminish to fates of development, resource abuse and more, I can’t avoid the sense that we continue to deprive ourselves, and future generations, of what natural beauty is left.

Future generations should not have to feel what I feel for Glen Canyon. That’s why I’m asking Senators Sinema and Kelly to support the Biden administration’s 30x30 conservation plan.

Brendan Trachsel

Flagstaff