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Show I Learned Why You Can't Trust The Grand Canyon Trust Reprinted from RANGE Magazine By Toni Thayer, Escalante "Don't Trust The Trust" Bumper stickers around Grand Staircase Escalante warn against the Grand Canyon Trust. I am an activist environmentalist environmen-talist and it just about took a two-by-four to the head till I believed it I set out to get a little information, infor-mation, enough to at least disprove dis-prove the bumper sticker "Don't Trust the Trust!" Instead, I was led into a worldwide web of names separate, entangled, and branched. I thought they were environmentalists, but they weren't. I was finally investigating investigat-ing the Grand Canyon Trust's Board of Directors. My boyfriend, Steve, Gessig, badmouthed the Trust during our first two years together, blaming them for his town's demise. He grumbled about the enviros' connections to the World Bank and United Nations and plans to eliminate American sovereignty. I, however, am the avid environmental envi-ronmental activist and refused to believe his undocumented accusations. I had firsthand experience with the Trust in Flagstaff, Ariz. For years, I worked with their staff on joint projects and committees, attended attend-ed their workshops, and met in their offices. They were my friends. Living in Escalante, Utah, Steve's perspective was different, differ-ent, encircled by the United States' largest land theft, the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. The Trust spearheaded the designation in 1996 with a mission to protect and restore the Colorado Plateau canyon country. The Plateau is, basically, the Colorado River basin beginning in northern Utah, encompassing all of southern Utah and northern Arizona, and extending into western Colorado and New Mexico. The Colorado River is the giver of life, both water and electricity, to the southwest and the downstream metropolitan regions of Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Diego. The Trust made promises back then: "Other existing uses of these public lands are not affected by the proclamation of the monument, including hunting, hunt-ing, fishing, hiking, camping and livestock grazing." They lied. The 1.9 million acres have been shut down with access allowed in only a few areas. New federal workers moving into town freely come and go, beyond the "restricted" signs that keep locals from their families' traditional sites. New resource production has ceased even though the area is rich in coal, oil, gas, uranium, and timber. tim-ber. The world's cleanest-burning coal is located in only two spots the Monument and Indonesia. The Grand Staircase field is so vast it can't be accurately accu-rately valued. It has tentatively been estimated at $1.3 trillion. The Trust doesn't want any cattle grazing on the Plateau, an idea that's backed by federal government intimidation and harassment of the ranchers. The ranchers are feeling the pinch of the oppression, the drought, and their rising debt. They're selling out and ending centuries-old family cattle careers. Enviro groups are scooping up their grazing permits. Rich second homeowners and large cattle corporations are buying their lands. A million tourists each year have replaced the resource-based resource-based economies and 5,000 cows. They fly by all of the beauty and zoom through the little lit-tle towns, not spending much, mainly wanting water and sewer services. The 1 1 ,000 residents in two affected counties carry the burden of providing infrastructure infrastruc-ture and services for the increased load. From tourist-haven Flagstaff, I know tourism does not pay livable wages and that it causes major disparity between the haves and have-nots. I couldn't understand why the Trust wanted tourism when enviros often cited studies showing its negative impacts and lost community revenues. It didn't make sense to take such a clean, pristine and remote area, and market it to a million tourists. I also knew that all profits stem from resource production. It was hypocritical and outright wrong for Americans to consume con-sume most of the world's resources and, at the same time, shut down our resource production. produc-tion. Then what? Go to other countries and rape and pillage their landscapes to fulfill our hungry resource needs? Rural, southern-Utah towns are reeling' from the never-ending limitations and changes put upon them by the "citified" environmental groups. They have few jobs, if any. Houses are put on the market as older generations descended from the Mormon settlers die and their offspring move to the cities for work. (Continued next week) |
