After meeting up with Herb in DC and staking out our respective floor-sleeping claims in the pathetic SUWA flophouse, we hit the Hill. First order of business was to disabuse House members of the notion that this latest Cannon/Hansen bill is anything other than their typical anti-wilderness bill. After long days filled with office visits with congressional staff, furious document drafting, and decompression time at the SUWA office, we to retire to our hotter-than-hell luxury accommodations, the flophouse.
It is probably important to note that it is 90 degrees with at least 90% humidity hanging in the hazy, heavy air. The flophouse is a sauna. There is a moldy, musty and smoky mix of smells permeating the place. This is in addition to the sweaty smells we bring with us. It is delightful.
The street lights shine right through the windows making it light inside even at midnight. The sirens scream down the street at all hours. There are several SUWA folks crammed into two small rooms. Everyone contributes to the assortment of breathing and sleeping noises. And it's still hot.
At morning times, there's a flurry of activity--everyone is scrambling to find something cool to wear for yet another day of visiting congressional offices. It's essentially hopeless, but we all feel better knowing that once we finally get to the Hill, we can get to just about any House or Senate office building using the infamous network of air-conditioned tunnels that Scott Groene expertly mastered during his stint in DC fighting one of Rep. Hansen's earlier attempts to circumvent comprehensive wilderness protection for Utah. Things never seem to change.
And it's still hot.
No, not even. Just for common landscaping rock for use around the explosion of new-homes being built in St. George. It's even more absurd given that there are numerous existing rock quarries for landscaping rock in the area, making the need to gouge out unmarred hillsides in a proposed wilderness area purely fictional.
The quarry applicant does not have a mining claim or a mineral lease for this rock; the BLM is selling this stone through a non-competitive sale as "common mineral material." The decision will allow the quarry operator to remove tons of boulders from pristine public lands, pay the BLM a pittance and then sell the rocks and gravel for a many-fold profit.
In an act of unmitigated defiance, BLM based its decision allowing the quarry on the agency's outdated 1979 wilderness inventory. This borders on unconscionable as BLM has recently admitted that its initial wilderness inventory was seriously defective. This assessment is confirmed by BLM's recent partial re-inventory of the state in which the agency found nearly twice as much potential wilderness as it did in the first inventory.
SUWA's request to Utah BLM State Director Sally Wisely to withdraw the St. George Field Office's decision until the area was reviewed for wilderness was unsuccessful, so we filed an appeal with the Interior Board of Land Appeals.
There is a current trend in BLM of using outdated information to approve developments. Although this is unacceptable statewide, it is especially egregious on wilderness quality lands (for example, the recently approved oil and gas wells in the Duma Point proposed wilderness and guzzlers in the West Desert (see following article)).
As in the rock quarry decision above, BLM relied on outdated inaccurate information contained in its initial wilderness inventory. As is clear from BLM's recent decision, there's a pattern developing that is not good for Utah's wild lands.
A most notable improvement over past management plans is that the GSENM Plan closes many miles of unnecessary vehicle routes. When the monument was designated in 1996, BLM determined that there were over 2000 miles of open routes within the monument. The Plan has reduced this excessive number, authorizing public motorized travel on approximately 900 miles of routes within the monument. Even with the route closures, there are still plenty of roads open for public motorized travel which allow for ample opportunities for exploring the GSENM.
Even though the Plan leaves open a few routes that are within the boundaries of proposed wilderness, the Plan closed many other marginal routes. Although SUWA will continue to advocate for the closure of the "open routes" located within proposed wilderness, the Plan begins the process of allowing for on-the-ground conditions to improve.
The Plan prohibits all cross-country travel. No other land use plan in Utah has taken such a proactive step to curb the known impairments from ORVs. Unfortunately, the Plan authorizes ORV travel on 553 miles of the 900 miles of "open" routes in the monument. SUWA will continue to keep watch on ORV use in the monument and will keep the heat on BLM to abide by existing federal regulations and Executive Orders that require closure routes if ORVs are causing adverse effects to public resources.
Another plus is that the Plan does not promote or encourage recreation. The Plan strives to retain the remote and undeveloped character of the monument. This is reinforced by locating facilities and services in nearby communities, rather than within the monument.
Out of the monument's 1,870,000 acres, over 1.7 million acres are in the "primitive" and "outback" zones. Management in the primitive and outback zones (about 93% of the monument) is much like (but not exactly like) wilderness management. Approximately 85% of the monument is included within America's Redrock Wilderness Act, and SUWA will continue to work to keep all of these lands free of various developments that could potentially jeopardize their designation as wilderness.
On the downside, the Plan defers any real decision on grazing management until future dates, based on a nebulous set of priorities. The Plan also fails to adequately address the issues surrounding the oil, gas and other mineral leases, and the mining claims that currently exist on lands within the monument.
Overall, the Monument Plan is way out in front of other land management plans for BLM lands in Utah. However, there are other public lands in Utah that are just as remote, scenic, biologically diverse, and deserving of monument status as the lands included in the GSENM. BLM should not wait until other lands in Utah are designated as monuments before drafting land management plans to address ways to protect the valuable resources, but should begin addressing these issues now.
This action is being considered in the face of overwhelming evidence that cutting down trees does not "control" the spruce beetle. In 1993, the Forest Service issued a decision to build about 42 miles of road and cut down about 7 million board feet of spruce and aspen in Coyote Hollow. The 1993 decision was aimed at "controlling" the spruce bark beetle.
The spruce bark beetle apparently didn't want to be "controlled" since it is now attacking the very area that was cut! Not willing to concede defeat, the Forest Service is proposing to cut another 4-6 million board feet to "control" the beetle. Go figure.
In addition to being in denial, the Forest Service has refused to do any environmental analysis on this proposal. The agency is insisting that doubling the amount of timber removed from the area would not have any environmental impacts. This is unbelievable. Wildlife may not be able to count stumps, but they do notice if their nests are gone, their forage is covered with mountains of slash, there are loud whining noises, and machines are smashing their homes and playgrounds.
SUWA has requested that the Forest Service reconsider this proposal, and base any decision on objective and scientific rationales and to undertake the required environmental analysis.
HERB'S RANTINGS
And the antics of their leaders are no better. Representative Chris Cannon, sponsor of current legislation designed to promote ORV abuse in the San Rafael Swell, illegally drove into a closed area last summer, playing pied piper to a precession of county commissioners and People for the USA types. Ranking members of the Southern Utah Land Users (SULU), along with the group's president, have been caught and fined for constructing illegal routes on both BLM and Forest Service managed lands.
Although the local BLM office is boosting enforcement in the area, BLM and Forest Service still work with SULU and other ORV groups to keep areas open, allowing damage to continue in places like Arch Canyon and within roadless tracts in the Abajo Mountains. It's time for BLM to stop rewarding these radicals with permits (Jeep Safari, Jeep Jamboree), additional trails (High Desert, Piute, Ruin Canyon trail, other proposed "loop" routes), dropped wilderness units (Arch Canyon, Behind the Rocks, etc), delayed or toothless closures (Indian Creek, the Swell, Comb Wash, Moquith Mountain), support for bad legislation (Cannon's H.R. 3605), and general neglect to enforce the law.
You can help pressure the agency to protect these treasured landscapes by photographing violating vehicles, reporting plate numbers, and writing letters to the BLM. Send letters to Sally Wisely, State Director, BLM, P.O. Box 45155, SLC, UT 84145. Please contact SUWA with any information (435)259-5440.
What they don't mention is that the existing p/j forest is the natural ecosystem of the Cedar Mesa area (hence the name), and that it supports an entire food cycle of species. The proponents of "biodiversity goals," on the other hand, are limited to creating a grass garden for deer and elk--and they are willing to kill thousands of trees, wreck the homes of thousands of animals, risk destruction of timeless (and countless) archeological sites, and tarnish the unique, expansive view of p/j forest on Cedar Mesa, broken only by the riparian corridors of Pickett Fork, Fish Creek and other canyons and drainages.
Originally, project proponents wanted to perform this p/j massacre on both BLM and state lands. The BLM declined to participate, noting that such action would run counter to wilderness. So the proponents wrote-off the BLM and instead are focusing the chainsaw carnage and helicopter fire raid on two state land sections--one located within, and the other adjacent to the Fish and Owl Creek Wilderness Study Area. The School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration have the legal duty to manage these lands for the benefit of the schoolchildren.
Typically, these SITLA lands are traded out of protected areas for lands more valuable to the children. Certainly, it is not prudent to forego this future option for nominal, if any, grazing fees. SITLA should recognize that preserving wilderness character is like purchasing a mutual fund for school children.
It should also be noted that the Steering Committee not only ignored the concerns of agency personnel, but those of its own members. The Committee was meant to be a "consensus" effort, meaning that all participants must agree in order for a project to go forward, and not all the members agreed with this plan. Those that did, however, simply steamrolled those that objected, and threatened to proceed with ever more atrocious actions. Help squelch this proposal to destroy wilderness lands that are valuable to all inhabitants of Cedar Mesa...including future generations of school children, by writing to John Andrews, SITLA,
Why would someone choose to leave the congested city for a blood raising and life-threatening drive down highway 191, only to spend a frustrating weekend in a town literally bubbling over its redrock brims with hordes of adrenaline charged people in super charged trucks? Whether or not he was conscious of it, this driver was asking himself that question.
I hike up Poison Spider Mesa, and peer into the windows of vehicles I easily pass as they creep laboriously over rock. I see many depressing things. Sweaty passengers with heat-twisted faces, drivers intently focused on the bumper ahead, heads bobbing to the beat of some unlikely jam, babies breathing fumes strapped to carseats in direct and relentless sun--one thing for certain--they all appeared anxious, uncomfortable, and unfulfilled. Like they were there without choice. The ultimate metaphor for lost sheep.
I think about wilderness and the choices it brings, the journeys and adventures it provides even without moving from one place--at times just as a thought, a concept. Assuring "access" to everyone to quiet places...an absolutely necessary escape from our daily lives, for private contemplation. For solitude. For vast views unobstructed by the toys of technocracy. I think about the disgruntled driver, and I feel sorry that he wasted his time, that he sabotaged his choices. How much more he would have gained if he had parked his vehicle at the lot, and then walked, rolled, or even crawled the few paces around the corner and across the road, to watch the lazy Colorado River slip through the quite canyons...maybe even take a nap and dream of the challenges in the wilderness downstream, finally to awake in a state of calmness with a head full of understanding of what "access" really means...access to one's self.
Keith Hammond keith@suwa.org
Washington Director
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
600 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, #340
Washington, DC 20003
(202) 546-2215 fax (202) 546-4392
Help Protect Wild Utah at http://www.suwa.org/