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Show Leadership Shakeup At The Grand Canyon Trust Brings Changes By Toni Thayer President Geoff Barnard has ' resigned from his paid leadership leader-ship role with the Grand Canyon Trust (the Trust), a Flagstaff, Ariz., environmental group, according to their Mar. 25 press release. Barnard's resignation comes as a double-whammy to the group, having just lost second sec-ond in command Brad Ack, program pro-gram director for the Greater Grand Canyon after he quit several sev-eral weeks ago. Barnard's environmental career includes eight years with the Trust and 23 years with The Nature Conservancy, of which 10 years were spent leading Latin American and Caribbean programs in 22 countries. Under Barnard's leadership, the Trust spearheaded national efforts to designate southern Utah and northern Arizona national monuments, areas that comprise the northern drainages of the Colorado River basin. These designations "saved" 1.9 million acres in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) in Utah and 1 million acres in the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument on the Arizona Strip. In the Flagstaff region, Barnard's hometown, the Trust saved "247 acres within Dry Lake from development as a golf course." In 1996, Barnard hosted President William Clinton and actor Robert Redford at the GSENM designation ceremony held on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Sorely missing from this event were any Utah officials or elected representatives. representa-tives. Also with Barnard at the helm, the Trust . "retired over 800,000 acres from cattle grazing graz-ing within the Grand Staircase-. Staircase-. Escalante National Monument and elsewhere in Utah." Other achievements by Barnard include initiating new programs in national park expansion, grazing retirements and uranium tailings clean up, creating an endowment fund, and purchasing purchas-ing and expanding a new office building in Flagstaff. The group says his leadership grew the small nonprofit from assets of $240,000 to over $5 million, donations to $23 million, mil-lion, an endowment fund (a future income fund for the group) from zero to $1.6 million. mil-lion. One endeavor not mentioned in the Trust's press release is its 2002 purchase of over 40 acres of private land in Calf Creek of the GSENM. The group's web page says "a core group of the landowners agreed with the Trust" that commercial development develop-ment should never happen on the parcels. Their stated purpose pur-pose is to transfer the private property to the Bureau of Land Management, the Federal agency that manages the GSENM. Les Barker, Garfield County recorder and surveyor, said in a telephone interview on Mar. 31, "The total purchase price for the Calf Creek parcels isn't available avail-able because Utah is a non-dis-close state." In other words, the State of Utah has determined that property sales prices are not a matter of public record. However, on their webpage, the Trust identifies the George and Dolores Eccles Foundation as the financiers who provided the initial loan for the land deal. Currently, the Trust is seeking donations to help with the $670,000 needed by Dec. 2003 to "repay the loan and finish the project". Barnard won't be severing his ties altogether with the powerful pow-erful environmental nonprofit. Instead, he's shifting to a senior advisory role, "focusing on fund raising and external representation." representa-tion." Bill Hedden, the Trust's Utah Conservation director, will temporarily tem-porarily fill Barnard's management manage-ment shoes while its board of directors conducts a search for his permanent replacement. |