Plan to restore West grasslands meets with resistance in
Utah
Felicity Barringer
New York Times
Dec. 4, 2005 12:00 AM
BOULDER, Utah - No cows remain on the federal lands set aside for
grazing here above the Escalante River.
At first glance, this would
seem a boon to land and cow alike. The layered rockscape just west of this
small town is immense, rolling from the river toward the sky. The grass is thin
and dry. The soil, the same. How fat could a cow get?
So, seven years
ago an environmental group based in Arizona, the Grand Canyon Trust, began
paying ranchers to give up their grazing rights when their herds, or bank
accounts, had failed to thrive. By this fall, the trust had spent more than $1
million to end grazing on more than 400,000 acres.
The deals seemed to
suit all concerned, until a group of local officials decided that they were bad
for the local economy and a threat to the ancestral tradition of living off the
land. The group set out to end this latest, uncharacteristically civil, chapter
in the fraught history of cattlemen, environmentalists and dueling visions of
the West's future.
Michael E. Noel, a former Bureau of Land Management
employee who now is a Republican state representative from southern Utah, led
the charge to roll back agreements the trust had forged. Noel said the loss of
the grazing allotments would hurt ranching, which would in turn deprive the
area's young people of the character-building chance to work on the land.
By retiring the lands, he said, the trust is reneging on an implicit
agreement, and "if we allow that to occur, we go down the path of eliminating
all grazing on public lands."
The Grand Canyon Trust's strategy had
been to look amid Utah's ancient russet cathedrals for lands that needed a long
rest from grazing. If the rancher with the grazing rights wanted to relinquish
them to the Interior Department, the trust would pay him to do so. Bill Hedden,
the executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust, said he could not understand
why his efforts, involving transactions between a willing buyer and willing
sellers, seemed a threat to Noel.
Hedden said he had hoped to create a
situation with no losers. Ranchers could consolidate their herds in more
congenial settings. Federal officials could bar grazing during a drought
without bankrupting ranchers. The trust, dedicated to preserving the Colorado
plateau, could show its financial supporters results.
Besides, he said,
the land in question is marginal economically and at risk environmentally.
Pointing to the soil's crust, a mat splotched with bacterial growths
that replenish soil nitrogen, Hedden said grazing left both grass and crust in
tatters.
"We don't know how long this land takes to heal," he said.
But given the resistance of local officials, Hedden is shelving the
strategies he used here. Hedden, however, remains quietly angry at the
circumstances that led him to abandon his campaign to use free-market tools to
curb grazing.
"We've been out there dealing with this," he said. "We
solved the problems of the BLM, and we're hurting the Kane County economy by
buying out guys who are going bankrupt? I don't get it."
[Non-text portions of this
message have been removed]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
section 107, any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or
payment to those who have expressed prior interest in receiving this
information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For further
information please refer to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml |