Outdoor Retail Giants challenge Utah’s Anti-public Lands Agenda

Outdoor retailers, Patagonia and Black Diamond, are drawing a line in the sand against the Utah government’s attempts to reverse a National Monument designation and trying to repeal the Antiquities Act.  These two leaders in the outdoor industry have gone on full assault flexing their economic powers in the face of an anti-public land government agenda.

Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia’s founder and author of “Let My People Surf”, is a long-time conservationist.  Patagonia is threatening to pull out of the nation’s largest outdoor retailer show that generates 40 million a year to the greater Salt Lake business community.  Patagonia and Peter Metcalf, founder of Utah-based Black Diamond, believes Utah no longer deserves to host the event as the state’s actions are antithetical to the outdoor industry.

By the industry’s twice-annual trade show remaining in Utah, they say they are actually complicit collaborators in their our own demise. It’s time for the industry to again find its voice, speak truth and power to power while making it clear to the governor and the state’s political leadership that this trade show will depart with the expiration of the current contract in 2018 unless the leadership ceases its assault on America’s best idea.

Patagonia is putting its money where its mouth is as they  donated 1 million dollars to the “Get Out The Vote” campaign and followed with another 10 million dollars to conservation groups by giving them 100 percent of its proceeds from Black Friday sales.  You an read the full article in the Huffington Post and Salt Lake Tribune at these links:

Huffington Post                   The Salt Lake Tribune