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Show FROM was wrong in some of my assumptions. Their welfare was indeed threatened by the cries of some environmental slogans like "Cattle-Free by ‘93." I will never forget my years in Escalante-the uprooting of my own family to live within the Escalante wilderness country, and to be closer to many of my kin and friends who resided there. My own great, great-grand father George Spencer, who left three wives and many children, helped settle southwestern Utah. My great granddad Miles settled in Johnson Canyon and the Kanab country. He once resided and taught school in Escalante. My grandmother was born in Glendale. My ancestors eventually permeated nearly every Mormon town in southern Utah, and most of them were farmers and ranchers. And so it was good for me to make the move to Escalante. Of the friendship and help AROUND THE BEND AGAIN... of the people, there were friends like Lloyd Gates who continuously scrounged pack horses and mules for me from other local ranchers. Reeves Baker, who had his own grazing ermit, IN JAN JUAN CO. BY KEN SLEIGHT became my head wrangler. Mac Lefevre, who often left his own ranching responsibilities, joined with me on many occasions. A multitude of other ranching friends stepped forward to pack and wrangle the horses when needed. In Escalante, a few of us founded the Escalante Chamber of Commerce, and I became its first president. We had many lively discussions concerning town government, roads, health care, economics, mining, tourism, the environment, and other subjects ordinarily dealt with by a Chamber of Commerce. A large group of concerned citizens we were. It was like a town meeting. Democracy in action. As Escalante was dependent economically on grazing the public lands, the issue was of prime importance and we dealt with that too. We talked about the need to reclaim the watersheds and the carrying capacity of the range. We were concerned with the need to provide needed water and reclamation projects to sustain our beautiful fields of alfalfa and Ww u lissues too. In particular, I objected to the State of Utah's proposal to build a oad across the Waterpocket Fold and the lower Escalante Canyon. The road would connect. the Bullfrog Marina to the Wahweap Marina. Working actively with the Sierra Club and other groups we were able to defeat the horrid measure And some of us fought hard against a steep dugway-type road, proposed by the BLM, that would be gouged out of the cliff face of Fifty Mile Mountain. ae : i THE FIGHT TO PRESERVE OUR GRAZING LANDS T.S. Eliot once wrote: “It's interesting to cut yourself to pieces once in a while, and wait to see if the fragments will sprout.” My grandad often called me a sprout - a small sprig. So I now cut myself and the community to pieces here, and wait to see if the fragments do sprout or is it all just a blowin’ in the wind. Let me entertain some of these fragments. A few years ago in Salt Lake City, at a fullhouse government hearing concerning wilderness, some of us wore green arm bands to convey our support of the Wilderness Act. After the hearing, fellow Bear Laker from Idaho, Booth Wallentine, the Executive Director of the Utah Farm Bureau, sidled up to me, gazed down at my boots and retorted, “All that Bear Lake manure has fallen from your boots!” Meaning, I think, that I had forsaken my Bear Lake heritage in supporting wilderness designation for many of our lands. His witty remark did cut some. By now, the reader must know that I come from a long line of farmers and stockmen, and the use of the rariges have meant much to our survival and that of our neighbors. supposedly to service the is a favorite of mine in assistance of Secretary of Congress passed the BLM's purpose was cattle that grazed there. There were many wild cattle. The plateau that some wilderness values still can be felt. With the great Interior Stewart Udall, we beat that proposed road too. . National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 that mandated the consideration of the environment before any major federal action was taken. However, over Booth Wallentine, of the Utah Farm Bureau, sidled up to me, gazed at my boots and retorted, "All that Bear Lake manure has fallen from your boots!" His witty remark cut to the quick. When a kid, I often stayed with my grandparents Peterson in Ovid. I loved the tiny tworoomed farmhouse in which they had raised their family. Working about the farmyard and tending the cattle delighted me. Especially did I enjoy trailing the cattle to the public rangelands and to the Bear River bottoms. Grandpa and I would ride our horses hour after hour through the pines and quaking aspen groves. The grass was high and the streams cascaded to the floor below. Cows grazed in the meadows. This was true wilderness to me. Forgotten momentarily were the ~ many labors of my kin, the lost lives, and the sacrifices they made. I listening intently to the stories of the settlement and colonization in 1863 of the Bear Lake Valley. I noted how my own great grandad had been of the first party to settle, and how they had to deal with the Indian people that they were about to replace. A great era ended for them after their massacre on the Bear River. It was a period of cruel and great change for them. It meant an end to many of them and they suffered immensely. My folks in Paris operated a feed store. And I grew up helping in the operation, grinding and cleaning the grains that came in from the farmers and ranchers throughout our county. Later in 1940 dad bought a farm in Woods Cross, Utah where I had a continuous and enjoyable time in helping work the farm and in raising feeder livestock. In high school I joined the Future Farmers of America and studied a host of agrarian subjects. I still remember in part, the club's article of faith over the years this law has been seriously maligned and circumvented. Especially onerous was President Clinton's declaring the Escalante region as a part of the Grand Staircase and Escalante National Monument. His actions stunned the citizens, and I too was very upset ' - that nary a study or the preparation of an EIS had been undertaken. Everything we worked for--the dream of the region under a wilderness designation--went down the drain only because some select environmentalists gained the political ear of the President. As a result, we now expect increased development and the further destruction of that great land. Huge chunks of money are already pouring in. Placing this region under.a national park label is tantamount to roads and more roads, trails and more trails. The impact will be thousands of times greater than the grazing of a few cows. To me, this event is an environmental tragedy, second only in the history of the canyon country, to the Glen Canyon dam. Talk about lives being fragmentized--this is it. An environmental nightmare lobine before us and life as we know it vanishes too. The family farms and ranches will surely be divided and then sub-divided again. We now await the dreaded developers who plotted — and paved the way toward sprawl. Corporations equate sprawl as “growth” which means huge profits to them. that went something like this: The canyon wilderness is now surely dwindling. We mouth that great romantic word “ We believe in the future of farming with a faith born not of words but of deeds, achievements, born in the promise of better days through better ways...as handed down to us from past generations.” Those words have stuck in my mind these many years. But as romantic and nostalgic these occupations might be to me, serious repercussions have hit the small farmer and rancher outfits. Back in the early 1900's the federal land agencies allowed wholesale degradation of our lands. Having barbwired all of Texas, the census Bureau in 1890 declared the frontier closed. But in a few years the Texas cowboys, financed by the barons of England, the forefront of the destructive corporate-type cattle companies, drove thousands upon thousands of cattle to the canyon country of Utah to graze on the luscious plants and grasses. With catastrophic results, they decimated the ranges and the resultarit erosion cut deep new gulches. With the grass now gone, the huge companies departed. Left were the smaller farmer/ranchers to pick up the pieces. Year after year, generation after generation, some families remained on the land. It's ironic that these people, though now attacked, helped to hold the public grazing lands intact through these many years. In 1934 came the Taylor Grazing Act which apportioned grazing allotments to those that remained. In 1963 came the completion of the disastrous Glen Canyon Dam, and the ranchers and the Navajo people were evicted from their grazing lands along the Colorado River. The destructive reservoir and millions of people replaced them. During the following year, the Wilderness Act established the National Wilderness Preservation System The American people recognized the value of grazing, and under its provisions, grazing could continue. Most cattle people were extremely apprehensive: they feared greater government encroachment. I did my best to explain my position in actively supporting the measure and why I believed they ought to support it. As it turns out their fears were indeed justified and I’ “wilderness” for the want of a truer descriptive term. This dynamic name still lingers as it has a ring to it--a ring of wild and former days. Yet I know that those “wild” days were full of contradictions. Grazing surely causes significant impacts on the land especially in the dry and fragile desert. Abbey and I once tried to return to our farm days. We bought a little farm at Willow Bend upriver from Green River, Utah. I took over the grazing permit. (I still have my branding iron - WB.) But when I drove a few head of cows to the Price River canyon I found no grass as it was terribly overgrazed. That ended my grazing career. But any use of the land has an impact. With ranching there are ways to minimize the impacts; ranchers can be good stewards. Past practices may no longer be acceptable. There is little argument there. | remember my old college professor, Walter Cottom, lecturing on — the question as to whether Utah was Sahara-bound due to overgrazing and other panics There were many mistakes made then that we don't want to make again. We need to get on with range rehabilitation and deal with the matters of erosion and the need to bring back the soil where it has been lost. It will demand better management and it will take a program of rotation and rest. Merely cutting the numbers of stock is not always the answer; it's more the adequate distribution of that stock from place to place on the range. Keep movin' those cows. Even then, some areas may need grazing cuts. Better ecological methods can be found. Part of the grazing fee should be used to pay for some of the improvements and studies. The solution here is to have wise stewardship— to. graze responsibly. And if we are ioe of the ways, we are certainly capable of learning how to do it. The day of reckoning is here. The future of ranching and grazing must be considered. In some cases, grazing has indeed become a “right’ and not merely a “privilege.” as some maintain. It certainly has become a right, through long and continuous usage, to continue to graze the forage of that land. For generations, these rights were reenforced with the |