Dear HCN,
From my
kitchen window, I can see the Escalante River and Del
LeFevre’s old grazing allotment. Since Del traded his
grazing privileges here, parts of the river bottom have begun to
recover from many years of overgrazing (HCN, 4/14/03: Change comes
slowly to Escalante country). Cattle grazing is still the single
most environmentally destructive practice in the Escalante
drainage. After twenty years living in the Escalante Canyon, I
still believe it should be cow-free.
When the Southern
Utah Wilderness Alliance was created — in this house —
20 years ago, national monument or national park status for the
Escalante Canyons seemed like a pipe dream. We advocated
for wilderness designation because it seemed to be the
only politically viable way to protect the land — a
designation that would have allowed grazing to continue unabated in
the canyons. When I spoke to ranchers about wilderness, I always
told them that if they wanted to protect their lifestyle, the best
way to do that was to embrace wilderness. Few agreed with me.
Today, the new monument attracts outsiders that many residents wish
would stay away. Adding insult to injury, these same visitors are
the driving force to remove cattle.
At the same time that
ranchers and other locals mounted vigorous opposition to
wilderness, they began to push road development, paving Highway 12
over Boulder Mountain and the Burr Trail. If you ask Del
LeFevre about this today, he’ll likely say
that paving was a mistake. Although locals wanted tourism
revenue, I don’t know of any who wanted outsiders coming into
this community. It always seemed to me that what they really wanted
was tourists opening the windows of their cars and throwing the
money out without stopping. The faster they passed through, the
better.
Bill Clinton’s monument designation changed
the dynamics of the environmental battle that has gone on in this
part of southern Utah for generations. All of a sudden, groups
like Grand Canyon Trust and Trust For Public Lands opened up their
purses to purchase cattle allotments, because they could justify
saving a national monument from environmental degradation. This
would never have happened so readily with wilderness designation.
Soon, land prices rocketed, bringing more pressure on ranchers to
sell to the very outsiders they so long disdained. Some did,
including some of the founding ranching families of
Boulder.
Ironically, the outsiders have also done what the
locals have largely been unable to do — give tourists to the
new monument the amenities they desire. I never thought I’d
see the day of wine and cappuccino with a dinner out in Boulder.
The state environmental groups who have fought to
preserve these canyons for many years now have a “cash
cow,” holding up the monument as proof of what a great job
they are doing. Yet, looking at the entire Escalante ecosystem, the
new monument, which includes only BLM lands, continues the legacy
of fragmenting the landscape. The “Grand Staircase”
lacks its critical top step, the Aquarius Plateau, which is in a
national forest. All of the drainages that feed the Escalante River
begin on a plateau that has been sacrificed to the chain saw and
the cow. Twenty years ago, we chose the politically
“practical” road of seeking wilderness designation as
the best way to protect these lands.
Fortunately, Bill
Clinton’s visionary designation granted protections for these
lands beyond our wildest dreams. Now, the Utah Wilderness Coalition
is promoting a wilderness bill before Congress that leaves out the
spectacular Aquarius Plateau Forest Service lands that are so
integral to the Escalante Canyon ecosystem — repeating the
mistaken strategy of choosing political expediency over
vision.
Robert Weed Weinick
Calf Creek,
Utah
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Wilderness would have been better for ranchers.
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