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Show Canyonlands Nat'l Park has untouched mesas 1 i MOAB High atop the rugged buttes and mesas of Canyonlands National Park, and tucked away in remote, inaccessible canyons, is land virtually untouched untouch-ed by the influence of modem man. Thats the finding of a two-year field survey conducted con-ducted by The Nature Conservancy's Great Basin Field Office, for the National Park Service. The second of a three-phase project by the Conservancy, which contains Ct discovery, is now complete and has been presented fie federal agency in Moab. According to the Conservancy's Utah Public Lands Planner, Nick VanPelt, in 1989 and 1990 a small team inspected and photographed 1 6 sites believed to be in pristine condition. Most of the increasingly popular park saw cattle grazing and uranium mining before it was created in 1964. Almost all of its backcountry is open to recreation today. The team also surveyed nearby Arches National Park, and Natural Bridges and Colorado National Monuments, but found little acreage in the same "relict" or untouched condition. Park Service managers are excited about the discovery, and its potential use for park preservation. "The data and photographs for Canyonlands will help greatly as we update our backcountry management Olans,' said Canyonlands Superintendent Walt Ubney. "Some of these places are too fragile to sustain much visitation and others provide a benchmark for changes hikers and campers may accidentally cause elsewhere," he stated. "The places we looked at only make up about two percent of the park, or roughly 6,000 acres," Van Pelt added. The Conservancy will work closely with the Park Service on follow-up surveys and will push for those areas which qualify" to be set aside as Research National Areas (RNAs). Van Pelt points out that these mini-wilderness sites usually occupy only a few hundred acres, are just for scientific and educational studies and don't interfere with other resource uses. All must first be approved by the Park Service's regional and Washington offices. Chris Montague, Utah Projects Director for the Conservancy, Con-servancy, points out that the surveyed areas could become RNAs without any infringement on land uses in San Juan, Garfield, or Wayne counties since grazing, mineral extraction, woodcutting and most forms of recreation are already excluded from Canyonlands. Glen Canyon National Recreation Area resource specialist Chuck Wood, who is based at Lake Powell, oversees work on the relict-area studies. ' 'Our cost-sharing work with the Conservancy directly supports the Park Service's mission of retaining retain-ing a sample of high-quality environments, free of development, de-velopment, for research, education and guided interpretation inter-pretation said Wood. Scientists have already gained important insights from some of the plant communities in the relict areas. In their undisturbed state, the lands are "windows" on the past" for biologists tracking the impact of man's presence here. "The Park Service is beginning to consider how to anticipate the effects of global climate change on our desert lands," Montague said. "The relict sites of Canyonlands Ca-nyonlands will give us secure outdoor laboratories where we can set up photographic monitoring stations and other scientific gear during the 1990s. What we learn may help us do a better job of saving this wild and beautiful landscape for future generations. ' ' The rugged buttes and mesas of Canyonlands National Park are tucked away in remote and inaccessible in-accessible canyons in southeastern Utah where the land is virtually untouched by the influence in-fluence of modern man. (Photo by Charles Schelz) |