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RE: Protected lands
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eyo-@tnc.org
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Jan 29, 2004 13:27 PST
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Thanks for the article, Tony! Peter is on our board. He's a great force
for conservation in Utah.
Elaine
TNC
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Frates [mailto:afra-@addsuminc.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 3:00 PM
To: unps_sa-@topica.com
Subject: Protected lands
Olene Walker quote of the day:
"How many thousands of acres of sagebrush and juniper tree do you
need to preserve?"
See article below from the LA Times yesterday.
Tony
The day Peter Metcalf decided to take on the governor of Utah, the
lieutenant governor of Utah and, well, most of the population of Utah, he
looked at his hands — hard and scarred from years of climbing, the right
index finger missing above the joint — and wondered if they were up to
poking powerful people in the chest as he plunged into the contentious
argument over the future of the state's wild lands.
He works less than 15 miles from the Wasatch Mountains, where a web
of hiking trails and ski runs incites panting, exhilarated customers to buy
outdoor toys. It was these playgrounds that lured Metcalf's climbing-gear
company, Black Diamond Equipment, to Salt Lake City from Southern
California more than a decade ago. And since its arrival, Utah has
become a hotbed of the burgeoning $18-billion outdoor recreation
market.
The Black Diamond office lies only nine miles from the state capital,
where in 2002 then-Gov. Mike Leavitt, now head of the Environmental
Protection Agency, crafted a deal with the Bush administration to
overturn a Clinton-era move that extended Utah's protected federal
wilderness by almost 6 million acres. The rollback thrilled the state's
powerful mining, oil and natural gas industries.
Metcalf was appalled. "I have serious concerns about the recent
behind-the-scenes agreements that Gov. Mike Leavitt cut with Interior
Secretary Gale Norton," he wrote in an op-ed article published in the Salt
Lake Tribune last May.
Metcalf, 48, had been instrumental in bringing the twice-yearly Outdoor
Retailer trade shows, Utah's largest conventions, to Salt Lake City in
1996. The shows are sprawling extravaganzas that appear to hold all the
outdoor gear in the world — Everest base camps full of tents, boots and
sub-zero-rated sleeping bags alongside climbing walls and kayak tanks
— all revved by psyched salesmen and women in polypropylene and
Gore-Tex. Utah officials estimate the outdoor industry pumps as much
as $1 billion a year into state coffers. The conventions alone inject $24
million a year into Salt Lake City's hotels and restaurants.
That leverage gave Metcalf an idea: "There are many, myself included,
who believe it is time to consider pulling these [shows] out of Utah in
protest of the message the state has sent the outdoor industry and
community," he wrote in the op-ed piece.
The threat worked. The governor's office scrambled to establish an
environmental task force to appease Metcalf and his supporters. Leavitt
fast-walked the trade show last August to press the flesh. Convention
organizers tentatively agreed to keep the show, which convenes this
week at the Salt Palace, in Utah through this year.
Metcalf's campaign threw the conservation debate into an end-over-end
tumble, and as the dust settled, mountain bikes and snowboards came
out on a more equal footing with earthmovers and oil drilling rigs. This
unlikely outcome at first cheered environmentalists. But now some are
wondering whether concern for profit — by extraction industrialists or
outdoor industrialists — is ever in nature's best interests.
Recreation rules
Even on a Tuesday afternoon, the powder-packed trails running through
the Wasatch Mountains draw cross-country skiers seeking solitude
amid ghostly tangles of cottonwoods and conifers drooping under the
weight of their white loads. "You won't find people who love the land
more than Utahans," says one local snowshoer, Rick Reese. The skiers
who pass — a mix of locals and tourists — agree.
Since the 1980s, debates over Utah's lands have become national
battles, pitting the oil, natural gas and mineral resources below the
state's surface against the rugged mountains, red rock canyons and
painted deserts above. Extraction industries have always been central
to the state's economy and, therefore, to its politics.
But while no one was looking, mining and oil dollars had fallen to $1.2
billion by 2000; tourism receipts climbed to $4.15 billion in 2001. Utah
officials estimate that directly or indirectly tourism supports one in
every nine jobs, and visits to the state have leaped more than 350% in
the last 20 years. Tourism, undervalued in the U.S. compared with other
countries, is a growing force in an economy where the service sector
has largely supplanted manufacturing.
A good chunk of the cash tourists spend finds its way to small
businesses in areas near Utah's national and state parks. Among the
state's more than 23 million acres of government-managed land are
such action sports magnets as Moab, where mountain bikers career
over surreal slickrock formations at Arches National Park; Canyonlands
National Park, where hikers explore slot canyons; the rivers of Dinosaur
National Monument, a rafting and kayaking draw; and Zion National
Park, where climbers can spend days scaling magnificent rock faces.
During the 1980s, national conservation groups targeted the outskirts of
these parks for wilderness protection, and the Bureau of Land
Management eventually closed 3.2 million acres to both development
and motorized vehicles.
But enthusiasm for federal protection doesn't run deep in Utah. Veins
pop when the feds designate areas off-limits to local development. "It's a
cultural thing," said John Redd, 33, summing up the pervasive sentiment.
For Redd, whose family came to Utah in 1846, anti-federalism is
endemic. "The people who settled Utah came here because we'd been
pushed out of every other state. For the federal government to come in
and say, 'We're going to take this land,' it couldn't be more offensive."
The battle over Utah's wild lands climaxed in 1996 when President
Clinton, campaigning for reelection, created Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument, a sprawling tract of twisted boulders, arches and
slot canyons covering 1.9 million acres in south-central Utah. Then-Gov.
Leavitt, a Republican, learned of the president's decision from the New
York Times. Clinton's secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, later
extended temporary federal protection to almost 6 million more acres in
Utah, establishing the largest hands-off territory in the nation outside
Alaska and California. The decision drew howls of protest — and
lawsuits from Utah's political leaders arguing that the U.S. government
had overstepped its bounds.
Leavitt's payback for Grand Staircase-Escalante was the rollback last
summer of the wilderness zones the Clinton administration had
established. In exchange for the state dropping its legal action, Norton
agreed to withdraw protection from nearly 6 million acres. (About 3.2
million acres, including Grand Staircase-Escalante, remain protected.)
Leavitt also won the right to use provisions of an obscure 1866 law to
disqualify even more of Utah from eligibility for wilderness protection.
But it was no longer business as usual in Utah. Metcalf and other
outdoor executives played their wild card, threatening to take their
money off the table. Nationally, the outdoor industry pulled in $5.2 billion
in equipment sales alone in 2001, according to the Outdoor Industry
Assn. That clout is felt in Utah as in few other places.
Firms such as Black Diamond, with 2003 revenue of $45 million, see
"wild places as the economic backbone of outdoor recreation,"
explained Frank Huelmeyer, the association's president.
Metcalf's op-ed piece attacking the governor's deal was chased by
reports that the Outdoor Retailer trade show might move to Denver or
Reno. Hotel owners, restaurateurs and Salt Lake City officials pleaded
with Leavitt to mend fences.
"These shows are enormously important to us," said Lana Buehler,
manager of the 175-room Crystal Inn in Salt Lake City. She wrote a
letter asking Leavitt to reconsider. "I don't feel strongly about the land,
but the governor should do whatever is necessary to keep the shows
here," she added.
Leavitt found himself in a startling new climate, as small-business
owners lobbied for greater environmental sensitivity. He met with outdoor
industry leaders, promised to protect more red rock canyons and laid the
groundwork for a task force of government and outdoor industry leaders
charged with identifying recreational sites that deserve protection. The
economic concerns of the politically powerful small-business sector,
Leavitt intimated, can eclipse ideological battles over the environment.
The outcome, believes Metcalf, demonstrates the influence outdoor
recreation can amass if properly focused. "People are realizing we've
been speaking the wrong language," he said. "We can't talk about
philosophy or beauty. We have to talk about money. Do these lands
bring dollars to Utah? If so, we need to protect them."
The concept is already at work from Costa Rica to Patagonia, where a
few leaders have concluded that sometimes uncut trees and pristine
ridges are worth more than timber and ore.
If Metcalf's strategy succeeds in Utah, it could give a boost to outdoor
enthusiasts' clout everywhere.
"If this works, it will be heard around the world," said Bruce Hamilton,
national conservation director at the Sierra Club. "The Utah situation is
forcing other states to look over their shoulders and wonder if they need
to get their environmental house in order for business reasons.
Everyone's watching."
A trade-off
As the Outdoor Retailer show convenes this week, some of the
attendees will probably travel south, to Dirty Devil Wilderness Study
Area, to ponder if the outdoor industry has become a political power
and, if so, whether environmental advocates should rejoice or be afraid.
The Dirty Devil-Happy Canyons, a canyoneering wonderland of rocky
symphonies in red and yellow, are protected by federal order. But the
surrounding ridges are not. Last November the BLM announced it would
auction a handful of previously protected areas, including one of these
ridges, for oil exploration. Outdoor industry officials quickly attacked
the decision, demanding that state officials object to the auctions. The
state relented on some lands, but not on the Dirty Devil ridges.
Hikers nearby on a cold January day gazed at the gorges as their breath
escaped in long, white strands, and said they felt that, as long as the
canyons are protected, one small artifact of man on a ridge wouldn't
spoil the hundreds of empty acres surrounding it. That logic might
appeal to Metcalf. Losing protection of some areas, he said, is an
inevitable part of achieving compromise. A single oil rig to ensure
protection of a vast canyon may be a fair trade.
But that ragged pragmatism worries some environmentalists. "The point
of the Wilderness Act is that there are places worth protecting even if
they don't offer a direct economic payoff," said Larry Young, executive
director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. "Even if we can't
spend much time in the wilderness, just knowing it's there, knowing we
have a value system that protects those areas, is important. If this
debate becomes about only protecting areas that make money, we've
lost."
The first test of the outdoor industry's muscle will come when the new
environmental task force, composed of 10 government officials and six
recreation representatives, meets for the first time after the trade show.
Although the group has no real power, Utah Gov. Olene S. Walker, who
replaced the EPA-bound Leavitt last November, said in an interview this
month that she will seriously consider using state power to protect
recreational areas recommended by the group. But the GOP governor
added that her interest extends only to recreational areas. "How many
thousands of acres of sagebrush and juniper tree do you need to
preserve?" she asked.
Environmental groups worry that many of the task force-named areas
will be smaller than what wilderness advocates seek. Although generally
supportive of Metcalf's fight, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
warns it may protest agreements that protect only recreational areas.
Even Metcalf is unsure his strategy can win over everyone. "Talking with
some environmentalists is like talking to abortion protesters," he said.
"It's the same attitude — we can't lose even one acre. We have to keep
people like that out of this conversation."
As Black Diamond prepares for the Outdoor Retailer show, Metcalf's
fingers have been busy scribbling notes, taking calls and shifting
papers. His hands are strong — strong enough to take this trade show
hostage, he said, and use it to demand a seat at the governor's table.
But in spite of his optimism, the true test of his strength, and that of
the recreation economy's, lies on the horizon, in his ability to join
hands not just with those on the other side of the table, but with the
environmental advocates standing tentatively beside him.
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------ Charles Duhigg is a Times staff writer. He can be reached at
charles-@latimes.com.
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