The announcement that Anasazi Heritage Center director LouAnn Jacobson has been picked as interim manager of the new Canyons of the Ancients National Monument should relieve many local concerns. Jacobson is a good choice for the job, for several reasons.

First, she’s knowledgeable about the places she’s trying to protect. One of the reasons that Ancestral Puebloan sites attract visitors is that the uniqueness of the ruins and the culture they represent. It makes sense that the person placed in charge of protecting those sites be someone who has considerable familiarity with them.

Those still holding out hope that the monument designation will be reversed need to realize that even if that were to happen, the cat is out of the bag. Whether or not this place is called "Canyons of the Ancients" and remains a national monument, it’s now in the public eye, and people will visit it.

Because it seems likely that this monument will never be generously funded, hard decisions will have to be made, and those decisions have already begun. If not all the sites can be protected, which are the most important? Where does preservation money go? How should visitation be directed? Those decisions need to be made by someone who understands the historic significance of the sites the monument was created to protect, and who also understands the climate — both ecological and political — in which it exists.

Certainly, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and Jacobson recognizes that. She’s been here long enough to understand the concerns of the monument’s neighbors, including the governmental entities that have to co-exist with the BLM, and she’s insightful enough to know that many of those concerns are valid. She’s in a very good position to keep locals’ worst fears from becoming reality. Concessions will have to be made on both sides, and realities recognized, and who better to supervise that process than someone who’s been watching the drama unfold?

Jacobson isn’t a political appointee from Washington; she knows us and she’s willing to sit down at a table with us. She hasn’t been sent here from some modern monument. She says she doesn’t have any interest in playing the games necessary to become the permanent monument director. She knows the difference between a firm hand and a heavy hand. She obviously cares very much about both the canyons and the ancients.