FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FLAGSTAFF, AZ — The Grand Canyon Trust opposes the Trump administration’s decision to unravel a complex grazing-privilege buyout the Trust helped broker two decades ago to protect the Escalante River canyons in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument from much of the damage wrought by cattle grazing.
Owing to this free-market arrangement made in 1999 — one backed by practical-minded ranchers, federal and state officials, and conservationists alike — the Escalante River and a good deal of the canyon country around it have been free for two decades of cattle grazing. Yet, in a new plan for managing the monument released in February 2020, the Trump administration has arbitrarily upended the deal. The river will mostly remain cattle-free under that plan, but every other bit of the surrounding canyonlands affected by the 1999 deal will be reopened to grazing.
While the Trust is thankful that some common sense prevailed in keeping the Escalante River mostly closed to grazing, the decision taken as a whole is misguided. It will needlessly harm the canyon country of the Escalante River, while spelling ruin for market-based grazing retirements, equally to the detriment of ranchers, conservationists, and public servants who want to craft level-headed solutions to thorny questions about how to manage our public lands.
The Trump administration’s decision is a backward step in the delicate project of managing the splendid country of the Escalante, and the Trust opposes it.
Background
The natural forces that etched the rugged Escalante River canyons also make ranching there a difficult business. In the late 1990s, several ranching families grazing on the public lands in the canyons were ready for a change. Yet with money sunk into their operations, relocating or retiring was a financial challenge. And though these spectacular public lands had been degraded by cattle grazing, the prospect of precipitating financial hardship made it difficult for the federal government to think seriously about closing the canyons to grazing.
So, sympathetic to this hardship, the Trust raised and paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation to the ranchers, aiming to give them an out and give the federal government breathing room to do what it thought best: end grazing in the Escalante River and a good deal of the surrounding canyon country for the sake of a healthier river, better wildlife habitat, recovered fisheries, and a wilder place to explore and find solitude. The Republican governor of Utah concluded that this decision harmonized with state policies, and the Utah Division of Wildlife applauded the plan. A few years later, the Bush administration’s secretary of interior endorsed this sort of free-market solution to grazing conflicts on public lands. In short, it was deemed a good idea by everyone having a pragmatic take on the problem.
All told, a little over 30,000 acres along the river and in the canyon country around it were closed to grazing in 1999. About 15,000 more acres were set aside as “forage reserves,” places to be seldom grazed and only to save other pastures from ruin during severe drought or other emergencies.
The Trust’s rationale for its position
It is inexcusable that the Trump administration has indiscriminately retreated from the sensible policy achieved by the 1999 retirements. The costs of that decision will be at least twofold.
First, the new management plan will needlessly scar parts of the Escalante canyon country that have been on the mend for 20 years. It will reopen to grazing more than 85 percent of the lands — roughly 27,000 acres — closed by the 1999 deal, and it will put back into full-time use all of the forage reserves — nearly 15,000 more acres. Letting cattle back out on these places will take a toll not only on the fragile desert uplands, but also on the canyons cutting through them.
It is true that many areas surrounding these canyons have remained open to grazing over the years. But that is no excuse for inexplicably taxing the canyons further by turning out more cattle on the surrounding lands, all while upending the gradual recovery of the uplands spared 20 years ago from grazing’s burdens. All of the monument lands around Death Hollow, for example, have been off-limits to cattle but will be now reopened, no doubt threatening that exceptional sanctuary for wildlife and hikers.
It is also true, thanks to a last-minute change in the federal government’s plans, that the much-prized corridor cut by the Escalante River will mostly remain closed to grazing. This is doubtless a better outcome than the federal government’s initial proposal to again give cattle free rein of the river, and we are thankful for that. Yet protecting the river corridor was only part of our 1999 deal, and preserving that part of the deal does not somehow justify undoing the rest. Regardless, the river won’t be fully protected. The new plan calls for creating two “water gaps” to allow cattle to directly “access” the river, a recipe for spoiling at least two lovely streamside spots.
Second, haphazardly reversing the 1999 deal has sunk a nail into the coffin of an unassailably sound, bipartisan policy: voluntary, negotiated, free-market grazing buyouts. Backing out on the Escalante River deal is sure to purge the grazing-privilege market of conservation buyers. And that move promises to harm ranchers as much as conservationists, for on public lands that are especially hard to graze but especially valuable to protect from grazing, conservation buyers can often offer the best price, if not the only one, to ranchers who are ready to make a transition out of public lands ranching. Eliminating that option unfairly limits access to the free-market for ranching families across the West.
For these reasons, the Trust takes the view that it is remarkably bad policy to walk back the creative and collaborative free-market deal struck in 1999, and strongly opposes the Trump administration’s decision to do so.
READ: John Leshy's New York Times opinion piece on the Escalante River canyons reversal, "A Trump Plan Breaks a Great Deal for Ranchers and Park Lovers" ›
