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Show Help Us Save Our Land Open Letter To: Governor Bangerter, Senators Jake Garn.Orrin Hatch, and Congressmen Howard Nielsen and Wayne Owens: We, the people of Garfield County, need your help desperately! desperate-ly! For a number of years now, radical environmentalist groups have been trying to shut down our town, Escalante. People from various var-ious parts of the nation (most of whom have never seen andor know anything about our area) have continued con-tinued to join the bandwagon. It is to the point now where we are not only extremely threatened, but are feeling harsh effects of the outsiders' outsid-ers' efforts. One of their main goals is to stop all logging of this area and shut down our sawmill. This would knock out approximately 75 percent of the employment in Escalante (loggers, sawmill workers, work-ers, and Forest Service personnel), as well as take away the county's main revenue source. The county is too poor to provide needed school facilities for its kids and cannot afford af-ford this loss. The sawmill has already al-ready had to lay off one shift of workers and Forest Service seasonal season-al personnel have been cut. As for their complaints of our supposedly destroying the forest, after working five seasons as an employee of the Forest Service on the Escalante Ranger District. I know that some of the most beautiful beau-tiful places in this district are areas ar-eas that were logged 10-15 years ago. If those areas had not been logged, they would by now be full of disease and deadfall, and be awaiting fire situation similar to Yellowstone. (Fire is nature's way of purifying herself.) Logging also allows young healthy trees room to grow into tall beautiful forests. A tree needs about ten feet of root space to reach its full potential as a strong, tall, healthy tree. When an area is logged, it may not look the greatest great-est for four or five years, but after that it grows to be better than it would have been, if not logged. It is a cycle. In addition, the trees that are cut are put to good use and bring in revenue. They are called "wisely used" resources. Another of the environmentalists' environmental-ists' main goals is (and has been) to remove all ranchers from the area. The excuses and measures being used to get people and cows put out are ridiculous, yet are working. This is both alarming and frustrating frustrat-ing to our ranching community and county. The most widespread complaint is that there is not enough grass for wildlife around here due to cattle overgrazing the land. That is ABSURD! The reason rea-son why there is a grass shortage is because we have been in drought for four and one-half years. Most of the ranchers around here have had to sell either all or most of their cattle due to the drought. To even suggest that land allotted to 400 head of cattle is being overgrazed over-grazed by 150 head is absolutely preposterous! Even with the drought, there is still plenty of grass on the mountain, moun-tain, as it rains more there than in the valley and desert. Furthermore, Further-more, if a person would go walking walk-ing anywhere around here where cattle and other animals have been, he would find, as I have, that there is an abundance of grass along seeps and streams that have water in them. The problem is, most of the seeps and streams, especially in the valley and desert, have dried up through the duration of the drought. In fact, the town of Tropic, 40 miles north of us, had to have the National Guard bring in water for them to drink and to do dishes. Many water holes for wildlife that exist in the desert are there because the ranchers, over the years, installed them for the cattle. The ranchers do not hurt the land; they help it. Environmentalists have even managed to put the abundant prairie dogs, which multiply like rabbits, on the endangered species list. I'm sure you are aware of the enmity between ranchers and prairie dogs. Some Escalante ranchers received re-ceived threatening phone calls last fall (mostly from Earth First members) informing them that all their cattle were going to be shot during the deer hunt. Another reason for the decrease in this area's wildlife population is our area is being heavily hunted by an alarming number of out-of-state hunters. A good remedy for this would be to raise the price of out-of-state hunting licenses. This would decrease the number of hunters, yet keep the monetary gain for Utah's Fish and Game from dropping. If something isn't done about this, our wildlife population, popula-tion, especially big game animals, will be scarce within a few years. Worst of all, a bill has been presented before Congress to increase, in-crease, by 500 percent, the cost for ranchers to lease United States Government lands in southern Utah. This means that ranchers, now struggling to pay S7-S10 thousand per year, would be required re-quired to pay $50-$80 thousand per year. Obviously, very, very, few -only a handful - of ranchers in southern Utah can pay this kind of increase. Thus, the intentions of the bill are not to increase government gov-ernment income, but to get rid of the ranchers. Please do all you can to prevent this bill from going into effect! Environmentalists, ranchers, and industrialists should be able to live in harmony in the same area. Right now Escalante and the surrounding sur-rounding areas are shared by wise multiple use. If the environmentalists environment-alists succeed in their goals here, only a few of the select group would be able to enjoy it. Suppose the environmentalists do succeed in completely closing down our sawmill, remove the ranchers and eventually end up making Escalante Escalan-te a ghost town - please consider the following questions that will need to be anwscrcd: 1. How is the remaining Garfield County going to compensate compen-sate for the loss in revenue, especially especi-ally from the sawmill and from property taxes that will no longer be paid? Where is the money going to come from to pay for the new high school building Escalante received re-ceived two years ago? (The old building was condemned 20 years ago.) How will you help Garfield County survive these losses? 2. What about the great loss of revenue that would occur to the Bureau of Land Management through loss of grazing fees? And to the Forest Service due to no more logging industry? 3. Why would the United States Government, already in debt, deliberately put itself further fur-ther into debt - loss of income, increase in-crease in output of funds because of the need to pay welfare as well as unemployment, plus provide for the homeless, as all these people would be without homes and a means of making a living. 4. Where is the money going to come from to provide recreation facility upkeep on all this wilderness wilder-ness land (trails, bathrooms, campgrounds, camp-grounds, lake docks, etc.)? 5. The environmentalists say they want our area declared wilderness so people can enjoy the beauty of it. People are already enjoying en-joying it, and if we could get the Burr Trail paved, many people would enjoy more of it - people from all over the world. I learned this from being a tourist informa-tionist informa-tionist in the Forest Service office on weekends. How could people enjoy this land if needed services are not provided so they can get to it? Services such as gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores, banks, etc., which would be gone with the closing of the sawmill, as would most of the Forest Service, and all of the ranchers. 6. What is going to stdp the environmentalists en-vironmentalists from shutting down all of southern Utah if they succeed with the Escalante area? 7. What is going to happen to the supply and price of beef in the nation if this trend continues? The people of Southern Utah are frustrated with our state's politicians. It seems that favoritism favorit-ism is shown to the northern part of the state, where most of Utah's population and votes are. We arc part of Utah, too! Please hear the cry of Escalante and all Garfield County residents - help us save our community and county and keep multiple use of our lands. We don't like living in polluted cities -that is why many of us live here. It is not right for the government govern-ment to take our homes and harmless harm-less lifestyle from us without providing a favorable alternative in return. Linda Carr Miss Garfield County Escalante |