Stockmen Throwing In The Towel
On Clinton's "Instant Monument"

MOAB, Utah — Five Utah ranchers have agreed to sell or trade grazing rights on 120,000 acres inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Part of an agreement with the Grand Canyon Trust's central Utah office and the Bureau of Land Management, the situation is being portrayed by the popular media and eco-activists as an amicable arrangement, but the departing stockmen clearly indicate otherwise.

For them, it was a way to end years of harassment and interference in their operations.

"It's a nice example of environmentalists and the community working together. It has been rare to see that in southern Utah," contended Bill Hedden, conservation director for the trust, which organized the agreement.

What Hedden declined to mention is that the ranchers who are giving up their rights along the Escalante became so-called "willing" participants only after they had been systematically squeezed into a box with just the one exit.

This somewhat disingenuous portrayal of the ranchers' removal is the latest in a series of falsehoods surrounding the so-called "instant monument." Set aside by Bill Clinton just weeks before the 1996 election, the 1.7 million acre preserve was a secret scheme from the beginning, concocted by the Clinton administration, activist groups and Democratic members of Utah's congressional delegation.

Neither the state's Republican congressmen nor its Republican governor were apprised of the plan, and in fact were being told just the contrary by White House spokesmen even as Clinton was winging his way west to announce the designation. To maintain secrecy until the last minute, the scheme was announced not on the Escalante grounds themselves, but at the Grand Canyon in neighboring Arizona.

Under terms of the surrender accord, five ranching families will either trade their allotments with the BLM for other ones outside the monument, or will be paid with private donations raised by the trust to retire the right to graze in the south-central Utah monument.

The grazing allotments are along the Escalante River, especially popular with hikers.

Hedden said the agreement means that no grazing rights now exist along roughly 80 miles of the Escalante and its tributaries.

Hedden said money for the project came from individuals, who contributed from $1000 to $10,000, and from grants from various organizations.

He contended the ranchers were paid "well within fair-market value."

Arthur Lyman, a rancher whose great-grandfather helped found Boulder in the 1880s, accepted the offer because he was tired of trying to graze on land increasingly given over to recreation-seekers.

"A few years ago we had cattle near the Escalante River (near Lake Powell) and someone went in and shot 25 cows with a small-caliber rifle. So we sold our allotments there and bought others in what is now the monument," he said.

Lyman said he has purchased a ranch in eastern Oregon.

"I'm not happy to be leaving Boulder. I would have liked to stay, but I just couldn't do it," he said. "I've seen the writing on the wall, and I want to try somewhere else."

Dell LeFevre, a fifth-generation rancher, traded more than 26 miles of grazing allotments along the Escalante River for others outside the monument.

"I got rid of a bunch of headaches," LeFevre said. "We're getting run out down here. I'm about the only rancher left in Boulder."

LeFevre said his allotment along the Escalante was "one of the most hiked spots and one of the most fenced spots" on the river. "People keep going through and leaving the gates open. Then my cows get into areas they're not supposed to be, and that means trouble for me."

LeFevre, who owns the largest private ranch around Boulder, still has more than 90,000 acres in allotments in the Grand Staircase and about 60,000 acres on Boulder Mountain.

Hedden said the plan to retire or trade grazing allotments has been used twice before in Utah. The trust used it last year to get grazing cattle off the Lost Spring Canyon addition to Arches National Park. Before that, the Conservation Fund, a national group, used the tactic to retire allotments in a section of Horseshoe Canyon west of Canyonlands National Park.

Dennis Pope, assistant manager for biological science at the monument, said the deal still leaves 80 allotments held by 90 ranchers active in the monument.