Tuesday night's open house on a proposed management plan for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument might be likened to Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Utah environmentalists, the papa bear in this analogy, want a plan that designates most of the 1.9 million-acre monument as wilderness off-limits to vehicles and development.Mama-bear Utah off-road enthusiasts want a plan that leaves thousands of miles of dirt roads and trails left open to the public, in effect leaving the lands managed the way they have been for generations.
And then there were BLM managers, the baby bears, who have offered up their own preferred plan -- a mix of wilderness and trails -- that they hope Goldilocks, make that the general public, finds "just right." Not many Goldilocks representatives were among the dozens who attended the BLM's open house at the Salt Lake Hilton to pore over a plethora of maps and listen as monument planners explained four plans for managing the monument, which encompasses most of Garfield and Kane counties.
Despite the BLM's best efforts to answer questions, no one changed his or her mind. In fact, conservationists and off-road enthusiasts remain deeply entrenched in their opposing positions, attending the open house more as a show of support for their causes.
"It is inappropriate for the BLM to put maps up on the walls reducing the number of roads in the area to three or five or seven," said Dave Jarvis of the Utah Four Wheel Drive Association. "The BLM is making proposals to close roads and reduce access without determining the ownership of those roads. Those roads are property rights, and the Fifth Amendment clearly demands due process that has not been afforded."
Off-road enthusiasts were clearly outnumbered by a cadre of wilderness advocates sporting yellow "Utah Wild" buttons and preaching the virtues of more wilderness to anyone who would listen.
Heidi McIntosh of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance observed, "The positive aspects (of the BLM's preferred plan) is they have closed a lot of roads and they pushed development outside the monument boundaries to communities that can take advantage economically."
On the negative side, "the BLM has ignored their own wilderness data, and they have designated ATV trails without analyzing those impacts to the resources -- something they are required by law to do on (all) public lands," she said.
The open house is one of 14 scheduled around the West where the public can learn how the BLM intends to manage the monument, created by President Clinton two years ago in an election-season political move that angered Utah's congressional delegation and state officials.
Since that time, state planners have teamed with federal land managers to develop a preferred plan they hope will afford the greatest economic benefit to the communities in the area, preserve the natural and cultural resources and still provide for limited public access. It is a delicate balancing act.
The open houses are not public hearings, something that has tweaked the noses of many who say the public should have a forum for public discussion of the merits of the different plans. The BLM is accepting only written comments on the management proposals.
"I want to say my piece, and I want to hear what others have to say," said Lawson Legate, Utah representative of the Sierra Club. "People have to have open conservations, and relying only on written comments makes for a stilted, non-productive process."
Rainer Huck, representing the Blue Ribbon Coalition and the Utah Shared Access Alliance, promised to "rally the silent majority" and use the written comment process to "inundate the BLM" with comments recommending the BLM not change the way the lands are managed.
"It's time that the land management agencies abandon the agendas of the special interests and start serving the interests of the people," Huck said. "It's a sad day when a public planning process expends millions of dollars over two years to produce a plan so extreme that it has only one acceptable alternative: no action."
The BLM expected criticism from the two extremes over its preferred alternative, and it is bracing for possible legal challenges to whatever management plan is chosen sometime next year.
"If they choose to ignore the will of their constituents, we will be ready to seek justice in the courts," Huck promised.