Babbitt wants to Protect 400,000 Acres in Arizona
11/27/98
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Title: Babbitt wants to Protect 400,000 Acres in Arizona
Source: The Arizona Republic
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 11/27/98
Byline: Steve Yozwiak
Threats from encroaching civilization are leading Interior Secretary Bruce
Babbitt to consider greater federal protection for a vast swath of Arizona
wilderness at the west end of the Grand Canyon.
Nearly 400,000 acres of the North Rim's Shivwits Plateau are under study
for a possible national monument.
It is some of the most isolated, mysterious and surprisingly beautiful
land in the Southwest, settled by Mormon pioneer ranchers last century and
coveted by hunters for trophy mule deer.
The landscape flows from pine-studded volcanoes, across grasslands and
waves of pinon-juniper shrub to multicolored gorges, reaches of the Grand
Canyon that are not within the million acres of Grand Canyon National
Park.
As such, the plateau - named Shivwits for a band of Paiute Indians - is
subject to a variety of development pressures: uranium and copper mining,
housing subdivisions and wildcat roadways carved by off-highway vehicles.
"There really is nowhere I know of - in the lower 48 states - where you
have this great, intact expanse that is not all chopped up," Babbitt said
at the end of a fact-finding tour of the area last week.
"It also happens to be the most pristine rim area in the entire Grand
Canyon system. It is the most wild. Some people might say then, 'Why
bother?' My response is, that is the lesson of history: If you don't think
about it before the problems are on you, then you have controversy."
Unlike Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument - declared
without any advance notice by President Clinton in the heat of the 1996
presidential campaign - there is no imminent development of coal, oil or
other resources here.
The area is crossed by fewer than 25,000 vehicles annually, and some
places like Kelly Point, overlooking a 180-degree turn of the Colorado
River, is visited by fewer than 200 people each year.
But after touring the area with his top assistants, regional land
administrators and some of the nation's leading conservationists, Babbitt
said he fears it is only a matter of time before this land is discovered
by the general public and pressure mounts to exploit it.
"Fifty or 100 years from now, it could be very different," he said. "We
need to think carefully about how we manage this for the long term, as
part of our heritage."
Instead of surprising local interests and blind-siding local politicians,
Babbitt wants to avoid the backlash that erupted after the Grand
Staircase-Escalante move. He wants to talk with ranchers, hunters and
Arizona's congressional delegation, starting with Sen. John McCain, R-
Ariz., to build a consensus before recommending any particular action to
Clinton.
Ranchers, miners, loggers and oil drillers were not invited on Babbitt's
initial rendezvous, and they remain suspicious of the secretary's motives.
They fear an erosion of property and development rights, noting the
region's evolution of federal land restrictions - wilderness to monuments
to parks - over the past century, as steady as the Colorado River's roar
through the Canyon.
In contrast, environmentalists see an opportunity to close the loop on a
region of northern Arizona and southern Utah they envision as a massive
wildlife stronghold, a place where the modern world's march of species
extinctions could be halted, and even reversed.
Under the Antiquities Act, Congress as well as the president can establish
a national monument, and Babbitt is weighing the intricate legal
ramifications of the various ways the area can be protected.
"I'm open to a big, wide-ranging discussion. Legislation has not been easy
to come by in the last six years," Babbitt said of his time at Interior.
But the former Arizona governor is determined to take action. And with
only two years left in the Clinton administration, Babbitt knows his time
is running out.
"Obviously, I'd like to bring it to closure on my watch."
Efforts have already begun, Babbitt said, to heal the damage inflicted by
over-grazing, over-logging and suppression of natural fires across the
Shivwits.
For more than four years, Babbitt has nurtured a forest restoration
project on Mount Trumbull, one of the highest peaks on the Canyon's north
rim. And regional chiefs of the National Park Service and the U.S. Bureau
of Land Management are working in tandem to restore grasslands by setting
controlled fires, removing an overabundance of shrubs and restricting
livestock numbers.
But Babbitt says more needs to be done.
Simply expanding Grand Canyon National Park, however, would mean an end to
hunting and ranching, destroying some of the cultural values of the area
that Babbitt said he wants to preserve.
Tony Heaton's grandfather homesteaded a ranch at the mouth of Whitmore
Canyon, where upward of 600 head of cattle roam the Canyon's esplanade.
And Heaton's helicopters annually fetch about 10,000 river rafters up from
Whitmore Rapids to the Heaton family dude ranch on the canyon's rim.
"It sounds like a land grab. I think it's just a way of enlarging Grand
Canyon National Park," said Heaton, whose 80,000-acre ranch once included
an additional 50,000 acres to the east, before Congress passed the Grand
Canyon Enlargement Act of 1975.
"The whole Arizona Strip is a place we love because it's our home. We
don't need the government to close it up so we can't use it. If they end
up taking it away from us, that would be devastating."
He sees no need for the government to take any further actions.
A national monument designation, Babbitt said, would allow hunting and
ranching to continue but would block development of mines and
subdivisions, push noise from tourist aircraft farther from the canyon,
and preserve the natural quiet, isolation and the wildness of the place.
Geoff Barnard, president of the Grand Canyon Trust, said his group is
seeking a way to plan the future of what he calls the "Greater Grand
Canyon," which includes almost all of northern Arizona and southern Utah.
"If a national monument designation could connect together some of these
fragmented jurisdictions and provide an overlay of consistent conservation
management, and restoration of wildness, and restoration of healthy
ecosystems, we'd be all for it," Barnard said.