A special report by the Tri-City Herald

Land-use activist Steve Gessig, above, sorts protest signs he had posted along his property in Escalante. Gessig took the signs down after receiving threats - but not before they caused traffic jams of gawkers.

Old land agency trying to beef up for new era

ESCALANTE, Utah - In creating the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, President Clinton foreshadowed a new direction for an agency that previously was mostly a government water boy.

For once, the president didn't take the newly honored property from the Bureau of Land Management and give it to the National Park Service, the usual agency for such work.

"The traditional approach is: You see something nice, you get up a big movement to protect it, and you take it away from the Bureau of Land Management and give it to somebody else," Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said in February in a speech in Denver. "Out of that has grown a kind of perception that the BLM is sort of the Bureau of Leftovers, Livestock and Mining."

Changing directions causes conflict

For most of the 54 years since the BLM was created from the union of the General Land Office and the Grazing Service, the agency has been concerned with administration of range land and mineral rights.

The BLM was formed well after the landmark Grazing Act of 1934, an attempt to prevent the nation's property from being overrun by people and herds. At the time, it was still generally accepted that federal lands in the West would be transferred to private or state ownership.

In other words, the federal government was a caretaker pending "final disposal." That direction changed in the late 1970s after Congress determined federal agencies should retain ownership of public lands unless there were compelling reasons to trade or sell them, according to a 1995 congressional report.

"The retention policy may have contributed to a 'revolt' among many Westerners who still hoped that the substantial federal presence might be reduced through federal land transfers," the report said. "The 'Sagebrush Rebellion' ... was primarily directed toward the BLM."

Nonetheless, the federal government has divested itself of more than 1 billion acres. Of those lands it still holds, the BLM manages 270 million, about half of what it did 45 years ago.

At that rate, the agency would be out of business within five decades, a situation that prompted Babbitt to redirect its efforts.

"The bureau has an opportunity to play a lead role in this moment of conservation history," Babbitt told BLM employees in March. "All eyes are upon you."

Since the Escalante, the Interior Department has continued its push to change the BLM's role by letting it manage many of the new monuments, such as the Grand Canyon-Parashant, Agua Fria and California Coastal monuments.

The Hanford Reach Monument, however, was given to a different agency. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service apparently was tapped because of its relationship with the Department of Energy and because it already managed the Saddle Mountain National Wildlife Refuge that was incorporated into the new monument. What that means for the future of the Reach is unknown. But the differences between management agencies go beyond bureaucratic shuffling. The National Park Service, for instance, is typically charged with protecting resources and providing public enjoyment.

"We don't have that second part of the mandate," said Barbara Sharrow, assistant monument director for visitor services in Escalante. BLM's objectives at Escalante are preservation of the remote frontier and scientific study.

In a similar way, Clinton's official Reach proclamation said little about public access or tourism, focusing instead on the region's unique biology. "The objective is not to get as many visitors here as possible," Sharrow said of Escalante.

Questions follow BLM

The BLM's new direction hasn't made things any easier at the agency. Whatever friends it once had in the communities around the Grand Staircase largely are gone.

"We have worked with the Forest Service and the BLM, but you can't work with the Grand Staircase people," observes Escalante Mayor Marjie Lee Spencer, 66. "They are a totally different set of people with a different set of philosophies."

While nearly all presidents have used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to protect land, Clinton has done it more in the lower 48 states than any predecessor - another point of conflict for Westerners.

"Let's put the entire West in one (monument) and call it the Western Monument," chided U.S. Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, after an attempt to quash Clinton's monument binge failed in the House in mid-June.

And at least some in the environmental community question the BLM's ability to carry out its mission.

"Historically, the BLM, particularly in Utah, has stepped back and really not protected these lands in the way they should have," said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance in Salt Lake City.

"They have a lot of ground to make up," said Tim Clarke of Boulder, Utah, who is on the monument landscape design team.

The National BLM Wilderness Campaign refers to Clinton's strategy as "an inadequate step toward rectifying past mistakes." By its calculations, the BLM has 2.4 employees per 100 square miles, compared with nearly 16 employees per 100 square miles in the National Park Service. Once the Escalante staff gets to full strength - nearly five times what it was before the monument - it will have roughly three employees per 100 square miles.

Nor is the Fish and Wildlife Service without its own budget challenges. In December, for instance, a survey of national wildlife refuge managers indicated their lands suffer from "poor leadership, inadequate staffing and low funding," according to The Associated Press.

So far, said Sharrow, BLM's Escalante budget is ample.

McIntosh suspects the BLM will need "continued pressure" to make sure the land is protected, but she credits the agency with "heading in the right direction."

What she and others still aren't happy about is the lack of controls on public access to the monument, vast tracts of which she believes should be locked up as "wilderness" - a much more restrictive designation that can only come from Congress.

Wilderness is probably the worst fear of anti-monument forces such as Steve Gessig of Escalante. He's an officer in the People for the U.S.A., a proponent for "multiple use" of public lands - mining, logging and the like. "It's a complete federalizing of the land," he said.

"It used to be land the public used. Now, it's land of no use."

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