With multiuses in mind, BLM knocks at the backdoor to Grand Canyon

VERMILION CLIFFS NATIONAL MONUMENT -- The 3 million acres of federal land in the Arizona Strip have their remote geography to thank for preserving their spectacular red sandstone escarpments, slot canyons, rock art, and ruins of ancient pueblos.

One of the last places in the lower 48 to be mapped, the Strip, in the northwestern corner of the state, is today bypassed by major highways and mostly devoid of gas stations, hotels, and other visitor services. As a result, more than 12,000 years of human history written on this rugged landscape has remained in place, undisturbed by tourism or development.

That is about to change.

Here at the backdoor of the Grand Canyon, two national monuments, Grand Canyon-Parashant and Vermilion Cliffs, are poised to absorb the effects of the explosive growth from Las Vegas to the west and St. George, Utah, to the north, two of the fastest growing areas in the nation.

The federal agency that oversees much of the land in the Arizona Strip, the Bureau of Land Management, is preparing a long-range plan for the area that would allow uranium mining and oil and gas exploration across 96 percent of the lands outside the monuments.

The plan would also permit livestock grazing in the monuments and open 3,000 miles of roads to motorized recreation, including some in the monuments. A 7,100-acre ''play area" for dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles would be established. And although that area would be outside the monuments, it would be next to land set aside to protect a threatened cactus and an American Indian petroglyph site.

Critics, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the local county board of supervisors, say the agency's plan fails to protect the two monuments with their thousands of historic and cultural sites, and exposes fragile BLM lands to nearly unrestricted livestock grazing and recreational activities.

Others say the proposal won't safeguard rare plants and animals, such as the desert tortoise and the 20 species of raptors, including a colony of reintroduced California condors at Vermilion Cliffs.

''What you have in the Arizona Strip is a kind of sleepy place that has been highlighted with two monuments, but the BLM hasn't really risen to these different challenges," said Martha Hahn, a former BLM administrator with 21 years at the agency. Hahn now works with the conservation group Grand Canyon Trust.

But BLM officials say that the plan, which has taken four years and won't be finalized for months, is a commendable effort to reconcile the agency's tradition of multiple uses on public land with its newer mandate to conserve national monuments

''It's all about finding the right balance between protecting the resource and allowing the public to use the land for grazing and other activities," said Scott Florence, the BLM's District Manager for the Arizona Strip.