Proposal to Add Canyon to Arches National Park Prompts Concerns

Extending the boundaries of Arches National Park to embrace picturesque Lost Spring Canyon could reopen some political wounds inflicted in Utah last year when President Clinton established a national monument.

Freshman Republican Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah wants Congress to add the 3,500 acres of U.S. Bureau of Land Management land in the Salt Wash drainage north of Delicate Arch into the park.

Utah’s leading environmental organization hasn’t weighed in on the seemingly attractive proposal because it’s unsure of Cannon’s true intentions.

Caught in the middle are a public-lands manager trying to do what’s best for future generations and a Meeker, Colo., cattle rancher trying to protect his winter grazing-range water source.

“It’s very clear where Arches [really] begins and ends,” said Peter Valcarce of Cannon’s office. “It [Lost Spring Canyon] is an area that geologically, topographically and logically belongs in the park. It’s a continuation of the same type of beauty you see in the park. It’s curious it was left off when the park was formed.”

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance isn’t sure Cannon is telling all. “Obviously we’re concerned that the Lost Spring Canyon is only part of a broader package he is considering,” said Ken Rait, strategic director of the alliance. Cannon also is considering changing the boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to eliminate the fossil-fuel-rich Kaiparowits Plateau, possibly in exchange for extending Arches’ boundaries, Rait said.

“When we see the whole package, we’ll make a comment,” Rait said. Alliance director Mike Matz said he fears that Cannon will use the Arches expansion plan as a diversion as he tries to undermine the establishment of Grand Staircase.

Valcarce said that’s ironic because Cannon intends to take the necessary public steps to determine if Lost Spring Canyon belongs in the park.

“We, unlike certain people at Interior and the White House, we believe in the public process,” Valcarce said.

“Grand Staircase did not happen in a vacuum,” Rait said. “The politicians tried to ram a bad wilderness bill down the throats of Utahans” in 1995, when environmental interests stymied a bill to establish wilderness areas in Utah because they said the bill fell far short of what actually was needed.

He added, “The monument was a direct result of the greed and arrogance of Utah politicians in 1995 and 1996 on the wilderness issue.” Valcarce said Cannon would like to introduce legislation this year if it can satisfy the needs of all parties.

Both sides battled over a wilderness designation bill to a stalemate last year.

Walt Dabney, superintendent of the National Park Service’s southeastern parks group, which includes Arches, said proposals such as the Lost Spring addition should not be part of a larger argument.

“The thing to us that makes sense is this is a continuation of a drainage,” Dabney said. “There is lots of potential for politics in land management.”

The Park Service has struggled for at least a decade with managing parks created along ecologically shortsighted borders and overflows today with visitors, Dabney said.

Arches is facing the same problems that first surfaced at Yellowstone National Park, he added.

The federal government locked 2 million acres in Wyoming in 1872, believing that it had carved a significant chunk of land to handle the protected-open-space needs of man. Today Yellowstone is a year-round park, sometimes overcrowded and increasingly hemmed in by human and mineral development of all kinds, Dabney said.

Arches had 30,000 visitors when its visitor center opened in 1958. Dabney said he expects more than 900,000 this year.

Parks “need to be the size and shape that makes them stand alone so you can get as many people in and don’t destroy the place or the resource.”

Lost Spring Canyon is also part of a larger BLM grazing allotment permit now held by the Klinglesmith family of Meeker.

They bought a major portion of the allotment, which stretches to the Colorado River from the park boundary, about six years ago. They run 660 head of cattle east of Meeker in the summer and on the allotment in the winter from a base operation in Grand Junction.

“We knew it was for sale. We thought it was a better way to run livestock.” They previously had “fed a lot of hay” in winter, Lenny Klinglesmith.

“That area is awful valuable to our operation. It’s the most live water in the operation and the only live water in that unit,” Klinglesmith said.

Moab BLM range conservation specialist Bill Thompson said that spring in the canyon runs from November through April. The BLM over time has adjusted the allotment and pared the number of animals that may graze in the canyon and plateau country, Thompson said.

Valcarce said Cannon recognizes that several issues must be resolved: dealing with the Klinglesmiths; a natural-gas pipeline that cuts across the land; and public hearings.

Lost Spring Canyon is also part of a 17,000-acre wilderness study area.

Klinglesmith said his family has sought advice from U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) about the proposal. The property is already managed as public lands so visitors can access the canyon.

“I was under the impression they were understaffed and the number of people was more than they can handle,” Klinglesmith said of Arches. “Increasing the size seems to be an increase on the load of the park. With the national debt, this doesn’t seem to be something that needs to be added.”