Red Lodge Clearinghouse

The plans, issued May 9 and assessed in a single environmental impact statement, cover 2.8 million acres of BLM land stretching north from the Grand Canyon to Arizona's border with Utah. They include a revised resource management plan for 1.7 million acres under the purview of the Arizona Strip field office and new plans for Vermillion Cliffs and Grand Canyon-Parashant monuments, both created by President Clinton at the end of his term in 2000.

All three plans lay out how the agency will manage the areas over the next 20 years or so. In general, the plans emphasize minimal "human influence and use" in remote areas and greater use in areas near local communities or in areas that are already seeing significant use, according to the EIS.

Diana Hawks, who led the planning team that crafted the hefty, 3,000-page document, said the plans reflect extensive public input and collaboration with 10 different agencies and tribes. "It was a very good planning effort," she said.

A litany of criticisms

But environmental groups take issue with almost every aspect of the plans, from wilderness delineations to off-highway vehicle use to habitat protection.

Nada Culver, an attorney with the Wilderness Society's Denver office, said the plans allow for off-highway vehicle use on dirt roads, which were supposed to be off-limits under the presidential proclamations that created the monuments under the Antiquities Act.

"There's kind of a disconnect between the vision that drove the creation of the monuments and the actual management of the monuments," Culver said.

Specifically, the plan allows off-roading on more than 1,700 miles of trails and primitive roads in the monuments and across other areas of the Arizona Strip, flouting the proclamations' directive to keep off-roading activity to developed roads, according to TWS's critique.

Wildlife is also at risk under the plans, said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. Under the plans, wildlife habitat could be fragmented and noise levels could increase, potentially harming the endangered desert tortoise, southwestern willow flycatcher, yuma clapper rail and nine other imperiled species, he said.

"These plans need to put habitat needs of imperiled species before use and development interests," McKinnon said. "That has not happened."

Wilderness is another sticking point. Kevin Gaither-Banchoff, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition, said he is disappointed that BLM's plan includes 27 percent of the land the group had identified as having wilderness potential.

"People here love their wilderness lands and think more should be preserved," Gaither-Banchoff said. "It's BLM's responsibility as a public agency to protect what Arizona citizens want and deserve."

Hawks said that while the coalition's wilderness proposal was "very good," BLM winnowed down some of the acreage because field assessments by the agency revealed that some areas did not meet BLM's criteria for wilderness-quality lands. The agency also needed to take into account other uses, she added. (BLM identifies and recommends wilderness, but only Congress can designate an official wilderness area.)

On the roads issue, Hawks said the two monument plans limit vehicle access to designated routes. "There's no off-roading," she said. The groups are using the Wilderness Act's definition of "road," she said, but BLM includes dirt roads and two tracks that show regular use in the designated road system for monuments. The BLM is still working on a travel management plan for most of the Arizona Strip, she added.

Hawks also defended the plans' treatment of threatened and endangered species, noting that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reviewed the plans and issued a determination that their management prescriptions would not jeopardize the species.

Development pressure

The plans have received significant scrutiny in part because they address an unusually large, undeveloped area, and in part because its rural nature is changing. While the Arizona Strip is one of the wildest areas of the state -- or the greater Southwest -- the population within the five counties in the area is expected to double by 2020, with the addition of 1.4 million new residents. The city of St. George, Utah, just north of "the strip," is one of the fastest-growing cities in the region, multiplying by 90 percent every decade. That growth is expected to place new recreation pressures on the Arizona Strip.

"In 1966 we had about 8,000 people, and now there's about 160,000 or more," said Alan Gardner, who runs cattle on the Arizona Strip and is a commissioner in Washington County, for which St. George is the county seat. Gardner said he has not had a chance to read the plans but said better management is needed. "There's more pressure on everything," he said.

The plans are now in a 30-day appeal period. Critics of the plans say they hope to enter into discussions with BLM to address their concerns, although Culver said she would not rule out an appeal if those talks are unproductive.

Click here to read the plans.

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