Members of a national environmental group voiced opposition Thursday to the Bureau of Land Management's preferred alternative for managing the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
The Wilderness Society, based in Washington, D.C., held a teleconference in which four of the group's officers said they strongly favor one of the four management strategies presented by the BLM last month -- but not the one most likely to be adopted.Fran Hunt, the Wilderness Society's BLM program director, said the BLM was clever in how it assembled the four alternatives for managing the 1.9 million-acre monument in southern Utah.
She dubbed one proposal the "research alternative" because it emphasizes use of the monument and its resources for scientific purposes. She called another the "recreation alternative" because it preserves existing recreational opportunities and creates others.
A third alternative is clearly aimed at appeasing environmentalists and is, in fact, the one the Wilderness Society favors. It controls the use of offroad vehicles in the monument, protects its waterways and bans communications towers, Hunt said.
The alternative favored by the BLM is clearly a compromise between the other three, Hunt said.
"You get the impression they almost wanted to segment the public comment," she said. "It's like they wanted to divide up the affected interests in such a way that, ultimately, they could stick with the (preferred) alternative and say they've given something to everyone.
"The problem is, because (the preferred) alternative juggles its focus between research, recreation and wilderness, it falls short of the amount of protection President Clinton set out" when he declared the area a national monument two years ago.
The preferred alternative, she said, would allow offroad vehicles to damage the monument's wildlife habitat, would not adequately protect bodies of water within its boundaries and would allow construction of "unsightly and intrusive" communications towers.
The BLM is taking comment on all of the alternatives -- including a fifth option, which is to do nothing at all -- at open houses across the country between now and mid-January. One of those meetings will be held Tuesday, Dec. 8, at the Salt Lake Hilton.
Wilderness Society officials are realistic about their chances of persuading the BLM to pick the alternative they like over the one the agency likes. But even if the compromise alternative is inevitable, they are optimistic that other steps can be taken to further preserve the natural ecosystem -- not just inside the monument but throughout the surrounding area.
Hunt and Greg Aplet, the group's forest ecologist, said the Wilderness Society wants to work with public agencies and local governments in Utah and northern Arizona to develop a coordinated plan to protect waterways and minimize activities, like mining, that harm the ecosystem.
"Our concern all along has been that these lines on a map (the monument's boundaries) do not control the flow of resources and materials through the ecosystem," Aplet said.
"We think there are a lot of things that can be done (to manage land outside the monument), but we don't think it should be forced on people. What we're trying to do here is produce a common understanding of the interconnectedness across the landscape so people understand the way the landscape affects them and how they affect the landscape so they can start making decisions of their own to protect the future."
The BLM's preferred alternative, in essence, divides the monument into mini-management areas. About 61 percent of the land would be designated as primitive areas, similar to wilderness, in which development such as trailheads or restrooms facilities could not occur. Another 30 percent would be called "outback" areas open to motorized vehicles, and another 7 percent would be designated as "front country," where the BLM would build picnic areas and hiking trails and encourage public access.