In southern Utah, local officials are escalating
their fight against the Grand Staircase-Escalante National
Monument. On Aug. 25, Kane and Garfield County commissioners and
two state legislators sent a letter listing their grievances with
the monument to Utah State Bureau of Land Management Director Sally
Wisely and national BLM Director Kathleen Clarke, among others.
The letter requests that the BLM demote manager Dave
Hunsaker and reduce monument funding and staff. “The only way
we’ve found that we can get anyone to listen is to go above
their heads,” says State Sen. Tom Hatch, who signed the
letter. In 2001, the Department of the Interior relocated
then-monument manager Kate Cannon, following a meeting between
local county-rights activists and then-Deputy Assistant Interior
Secretary Tom Fulton (HCN, 4/14/03: Change comes slowly to
Escalante country).
Local officials wrote in the letter
that the monument’s “preservation management
philosophy” threatens “the sustainability of the local
economy and culture.” “If the monument has complete
control,” says Garfield County Commissioner Clare Ramsey,
“it will be managed as a national park, instead of … as
multiple use and grazing land.”
Bill Hedden of the
conservation group Grand Canyon Trust says the letter is part of an
ongoing effort by local officials, few of whom are ranchers, to
resist any federal control: “Nothing will suit them until the
government gets out of Dodge and just sends them checks in the
mail.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline National monument back under attack.
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