Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, has introduced legislation in Congress to create a national conservation area in the Escalante River canyons of southern Utah, but environmentalists immediately said they do not support it.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington with Garfield County Commissioner Louise Liston, Hansen said the move is intended to head off action by Rep. Wayne Owens, D-Utah, to create a national park in the same scenic area.The conservation area would cover the Bureau of Land Management's entire Escalante Resource Area, and the BLM would continue to administer it.
Owens earlier introduced a bill that calls for the National Park Service to study the region as a potential park, which he said would draw more visitors than a conservation area and could allow many of the same uses.
Liston said the conservation area would showcase multiple uses. She said a task force politicians, ranchers, miners and business executives from Garfield and Kane counties unanimously endorsed the idea. Environmental groups did not participate in the task force.
Hansen said the political and business leaders of the two southern Utah counties fear a park could threaten existing uses, ranging from ranching to mining and timber cutting.
"A park preserves resources. A national conservation area preserves not only resources but land uses as well," Liston said.
Hansen added, "In a park, you have rangers in Smokey Bear hats telling you to look but not touch. . . . In a resource area you can have cattle roundups like in the movie `City Slickers,' you can have rodeos, wagon rides, cookouts and walks. . . . People can get dirty and have fun."
Liston said she hopes environmental groups will support the bill anyway because it would make all the Bureau of Land Management wilderness study areas in the area formal wilderness, with some minor boundary adjustments.
However, Ken Rait, issues coordinator for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said in Salt Lake City on Wednesday: "The proposal would do nothing more than turn the Escalante country into a three-ring circus for cowboys, miners and road builders. It's a proposal that would rob the American public of the highest and best designation for the spectacular Escalante country, which is wilderness."
A coalition of nearly all Utah environmental groups has been calling for protecting far more acreage than the BLM wilderness study areas.
Rudy Lukez, chairman of the Sierra Club's Utah chapter, said a conservation area in California didn't work well, largely because of off-road-vehicle damage; another in New Mexico has stricter rules.
Generally, national conservation areas "just don't provide the degree of protection that's required," he said.
Lukez said he was encouraged to hear that Liston and the others in the two counties backing the bill supported any concept involving wilderness. It is a first step, "which is really nice," he said. That could lead to discussions between the sides, Lukez added.
Rod Greeno of the Salt Lake office of the National Parks and Conservation Association said the group supports moves to protect the Escalante River canyons. His association proposed the region as a national park in 1988.
"We still support national park designation for the Escalante and are unwilling to support any proposal which would impede, or deflect attention from, that need," he said.
Scott Kearin, Owens' top aide, said: "If they want to attract more tourists, a national park would be better. But if they just want to protect the uses that are there, a conservation area is what they want."
Hansen said he worries that national parks cost local counties more than they bring in. He said Canyonlands and Great Basin national parks were "disasters" because they didn't attract visitors as envisioned - in part because of access problems.
Liston said the 4,000 people in her county have struggled to provide law enforcement and waste management for the 1 million people who visit Bryce Canyon each year, and do not like prospects of another park.
She conceded that parks are a financial blessing for her county though, by creating jobs and some extra taxes, but said they are not as big a blessing as many people think.
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(Additional information)
Rules may vary
What is a national conservation area?
The Escalante National Conservation Area would be the first for Utah - but nobody knows exactly what that means.
Don Banks, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman in Salt Lake City, said the agency administers about half a dozen national conservation areas. Rules that apply to one might not be imposed in another.
The only definition he could come up with is that a national conservation area provides "more focused management to a special place."
"They're all defined by the enabling legislation. That way they can be customized on a case-by-case basis," Banks said.