Victims Of Clinton’s Land Grab
Worried About Future Prospects

ESCALANTE, Utah — Anger runs deep among some southern Utah ranchers who believe they'll be squeezed off the land seized by President Clinton for a new national monument.

Forty-four year-old Mary Bulloch hopped out of her cattle truck after helping fellow rancher Calvin Johnson of Kanab trail his calves down a winding dirt road.

"I'd like to secede from the nation. I'd like to go to war," an angry Bulloch told The Herald Journal newspaper from Logan.

Bulloch and Johnson have grazing permits for federal land that Clinton included in the massive 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The president designated the monument in September with no input from those in the region.

Clinton said grazing rights will remain with the land, but Bulloch and Johnson are skeptical.

They doubt they'll be allowed to continue running cattle on their allotments, and they're convinced they won't be able to pass their allotments on to their children.

Johnson, a former Kane County commissioner, has run cows on this rich red Bureau of Land Management land his entire adult life, just as his father and grandfather did.

"We've built these fences and corrals. This has been this way forever. It's multiple use. This monument isn't just taking the lands away from use, they're taking it away from all of us."

He fears the federal government will add rules that limit ranchers' activities on the land. And that could lead to trouble, he said.

"We're peace-loving," Johnson said. Still, he said, "You corner a wildcat and he's got nowhere to go. He's gonna attack."

In Kanab, Kane County Commissioner Joe Judd said people there would not be so angry if the president had consulted them. The commission has voted to file suit to try to overturn the establishment of the monument.

"He did it illegally. We question the process he used in declaring the monument," said Judd, 67, who moved to Kanab 17 years ago after a half-century in Los Angeles.

At the very least, Judd hopes the court battle will change the national monument's boundaries and allow the Dutch-owned mining company, Andalex Resources, to gain federal permits to the Smoky Hollow area. The company holds coal leases on the 600,000-acre Kaiparowits Plateau, now a part of the national monument. The proposed mine was to have provided 900 jobs.

"Rural people earn their living off the land; urban people make their living off each other," he explains. "So the president comes along and says, ‘We're gonna take your land.’"

Judd, like local ranchers, doesn't believe President Clinton when he says he will preserve hunting, grazing and fishing on the new national monument.

Judd points to Capitol Reef National Park, where, he says, 22 years ago there were 45 grazing permits. Today there is one.

He also has concerns with Clinton's appointment of the BLM as the federal management agency for the Grand Staircase-Escalante, citing the agency's lack of experience in managing a national monument.

He doesn't believe the tourists attracted by the monument will contribute much to the county economy. Backpackers and bicyclists are not high-dollar visitors, he noted.

Celeste Bernards, who with her husband left a law enforcement career in Salt Lake to live in Escalante eight years ago, said she sympathizes with area ranchers. The couple owns Escalante Outfitters.

"I don't want to see ranching ended," she said. "I hope it doesn't totally dispose of ranchers — they're good and hard-working people."

Clinton promised the public will be consulted as a management plan is drawn up over three years. Bernards said she hopes those angered by the monument will take advantage of that.

"Now they have their one opportunity to get involved," she said.

Clinton, however, is famous for making promises he has no intention of keeping, and critics say it is wishful thinking to believe he would honestly consult on management with people whose input he shunned when he seized the land.

The Bureau of Land Management has appointed Utah native Jerry Meredith as manager of the new monument.

Meredith has been manager of the BLM's Cedar City district office for the past 21 months.

"Jerry has his work cut out for him," BLM state director Bill Lamb said with considerable understatement.

The creation of the monument was opposed by state and local officials.

Mark Walsh of the Utah Association of Counties said, "I'd like to see Jerry go back and take a more public approach to doing business, instead of the sneaky way they have mastered in this administration."