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Still Rugged After All These Years The Sierra Club seeks permanent protection for the Colorado Plateau's wildlife habitat, its limitless vistas, free-flowing rivers, native woodlands, and untouched wilderness On Our Agenda
The Land This is desert canyon country. The Colorado River and its tributaries, the Green and the San Juan, have done much of the carving. Along the margins of the Plateau, high, volcanic tablelands rise to more than 11,000 feet, supporting spruce forests, aspen groves, and well-watered meadows. Stands of old-growth ponderosa pine cover mid-elevation slopes. Population About 785,000, of whom a sizable number are Native Americans (Ute, Kaibab-Paiute, Navajo, Hopi, Havasupai, Hualapai, Zuni, and Pueblo). Economy The extraction of uranium, coal, oil, and gas, along with grazing, electricity production, and logging are the mainstays. A lucrative service industry has emerged to accommodate a growing influx of recreationists. Seven Hundred Years Ago The Anasazi people, who had flourished in the Four Corners area for hundreds of years, began to abandon their adobe pueblos and cliff dwellings, for reasons that remain unclear. Nature Meccas Bits and pieces of the dazzling puzzle that is the plateau have been afforded varying degrees of protection, notably Grand Canyon, Zion, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Mesa Verde, and Petrified Forest national parks. Superlatives Unprotected canyons near Kanab in southern Utah hold the last relict riparian areas in the state, lush with hanging gardens, tall rushes and grasses, oak, maple, and Douglas fir. Near them is a fragile expanse of coral-pink sand dunes dotted with green islands of ponderosa pine. Popular Play Many rafters are drawn by some of the continent's wildest whitewater. Thousands of backpackers, dayhikers, car campers, mountain bicyclists, and rock climbers explore the terrain each year. Enviroclimate Some residents--notably miners and ranchers--resent "outside interference," and environmentalists and local wilderness advocates have been hanged in effigy or received death threats. Yet eight out of ten Utahns agree it's important to designate additional wilderness in their state. Conservation High In 1956, the Sierra Club, led by David Brower, defeated a proposal to dam the Yampa River at Echo Park in Dinosaur National Monument. In 1968: Brower and the Club prevailed in a campaign to stop dams in the Grand Canyon. Conservation Low In 1963 "the place no one knew"--Glen Canyon--was flooded behind a hydroelectric dam, creating the eyesore called Lake Powell. The Sierra Club had traded Glen Canyon, sight unseen, to save Dinosaur. Progress The Sierra Club recently played a lead role in developing the Utah Wilderness Coalition's model 5.7-million-acre Utah BLM wilderness proposal, and convinced former Representative Wayne Owens (D-Utah) to craft legislation containing most of the proposal's ideas. The Club also helped secure a BLM recommendation for wilderness designation for 75,000 acres in western Colorado, and it successfully appealed a BLM decision to deforest woodland in Utah's Henry Mountains. Recently the Club initiated a dialogue with the Utah Mountain Bicycling Association to establish mutually agreeable policies and standards for mountain-bike use and to begin a joint rider-education effort. Biggest Threats Mining, oil-and-gas drilling, logging, and ranching continue to degrade the ecoregion. Air pollution obscures scenic vistas. Dams reduce fish populations on the Colorado and other rivers. Roads for logging and tourism carve up ecosystems. Hazardous wastes, including radioactive tailings from uranium mines, contaminate water supplies. Vandals and pothunters plunder Anasazi ruins. Off-road vehicles rip up the terrain. Celebrators For many, the first name that comes to mind is Edward Abbey. With Desert Solitaire, the irascible iconoclast left such an indelible literary mark that many now refer to the region as "Abbey country." Tells It Like It Is Wilderness at the Edge: A Citizen Proposal to Protect Utah's Canyons and Deserts, prepared by the Utah Wilderness Coalition, available for $23 ($100 hardback) from Utah Wilderness Coalition, P.O. Box 11446, Salt Lake City, UT 84147. To Learn More
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Contact: Photo courtesy Philip Greenspun. Up to Top |
