Feds Extend Olive Branch
To Utah, But Not Very Far

SALT LAKE CITY — Federal land managers want to kiss and make up with southern Utah after angering area residents with the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah earlier this year.

Of course, the feds insist on doing the making up on their own terms, which may leave the locals wondering just what they’re expected to kiss.

An Interior Department official told a convention of 200 National Park Service rangers and maintenance employees that it's time to start working with the communities impacted by national parks, monuments and land policies.

"We want to adopt a program that is the opposite from the ‘War on the West,’ something I'm calling ‘Working with the West,’" said George Frampton, assistant Interior secretary of fish, wildlife and parks.

Frampton’s remarks were reported in The Salt Lake Tribune Saturday, but like his boss, he wasn’t in Utah when he delivered them. Clinton announced his national monument decree from the Grand Canyon, a state away from where the impact would be felt; Frampton was even farther away — in Corpus Christi, Texas.

"In spite of — or because of — the hostility toward the new national monument, I feel that southern Utah is ripe for developing a cooperative planning process," he said.

Frampton said another prospective location for such a program would be the Yellowstone National Park area, where some locals are angry about the re-introduction of wolves and President Clinton's decision to block development of a proposed gold mine just outside the park's border.

In a freewheeling discussion that hit topics ranging from upcoming increases in park-entrance fees to renegade road grading in southern Utah, Frampton said he wants the Interior Department to build on regional planning efforts such as the Canyon Country Partnership in southeastern Utah, a collection of county, city, state and federal officials who meet quarterly to discuss land-use issues.

While no details of the "Working with the West" plan have been finalized, Frampton said he would like to present the proposal to the White House for inclusion in the Clinton administration's new political agenda.

"If we can bring some of the experience in cooperative planning that we've had in other areas of the country to the problems in the Intermountain West, it would be a positive process," Frampton said.

Southern Utah counties are bound to be suspicious. Garfield County, for instance, has already rejected $100,000 offered by the Interior Department to help plan the national monument. Commissioners called it "blood money" from a "cruel, insensitive administration."

The former Wilderness Society director acknowledged there are some land-use battles between Utah and Uncle Sam that have little promise of peaceful resolution.

The Interior Department sued three southern Utah counties two weeks ago for improving roads that cross federal land without permission. Some of the roads were in prospective wilderness areas.

The counties claim they have rights-of-way based on R.S. 2477, a 120 year-old statute counties believe grants them passage over federal lands.

"It's clear we are not going to make a lot of progress collaboratively with the state of Utah on R.S. 2477 in the future," Frampton said.

Meantime, the state and Utah Association of Counties has sued the Interior Department over a re-inventory of 5.3 million acres of potential wilderness on Bureau of Land Management land in southern Utah.

Frampton said it's possible those lawsuits could "create some bad law" for the government, apparently meaning they could restrict bureaucratic powers.

Frampton said the Interior Department has not decided whether it will attempt to write new regulations governing disputes over R.S. 2477 right-of-way claims.

An previous effort to tighten regulations over rights-of-way died after Republicans swept into Congress in 1994.

Utah has more than 5000 R.S. 2477 claims, more than every other state combined.

Some NPS workers wondered why the new Utah national monument was being administered by the BLM rather than the park service, which supervises other monuments. Frampton said he's comfortable with the assignment, as is Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

"The Park Service is more preservation-minded, but BLM has the skills and science available to uphold the mandate in the proclamation," which includes multiple use of the land, including cattle grazing and the possible — although unlikely — development of mineral resources.

"I would like to see this as a test for BLM and I would not like to see the monument go to the Park Service," Frampton said.

Responding to other questions, Frampton said:

— Babbitt has "every outward and personal intention" of continuing as Interior secretary, despite sweeping changes in the Clinton cabinet. In a separate speech, NPS Director Roger Kennedy said he "doesn't have a clue" if he will continue as director, although he indicated the job remains his if he wants it.

— Interior does not plan any renewed attempt to hike fees for livestock grazing on public lands, although the agency is considering another try at reforming laws governing mining on public lands.