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Monitoring of Canyons of the Ancients set to begin
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Great Old Broads for Wilderness volunteers monitor impacts
on Bridger Jack Mesa in Southern Utah. With the help of the San Juan
Mountains Association, a similar effort is being staged for the nearby
Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Beginning in January, volunteers
will help the Bureau of Land Management gauge impacts from mechanized
travel on existing and user-created routes, a service the agency cannot
perform on its own./Photos courtesy of Great Old Broads for Wilderness
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by
Will Sands
The Canyons of the Ancients National Monument will be inundated with Great Old
Broads in coming months. A volunteer effort, spearheaded by the Durango-based
Great Old Broads for Wilderness, hopes to lend a helping hand to the management
of the vast area. Specifically, the plan is to document impacts from Off-Road
Vehicles and help the Bureau of Land Management keep mechanized travel on route.
Located 45 miles west of Durango, the monument encompasses 164,000 acres and represents the highest density of archeological sites in the country, often containing more than 100 sites per square mile. The large area of high desert was designated by a controversial presidential proclamation in June of 2000. Since that time, the Bureau of Land Management has administered the area but largely without a rulebook. The agency is currently working on putting together a management plan for the monument, which it hopes to have in place by the summer of 2006.
The absence of the rulebook along with the prior absence of a monument led to
carefree use of the land just west of Cortez. Off-highway vehicles in particular
have had relatively free rein in the delicate area. As a result, impacts to
the archaeological and biological resources are ongoing. The Great Old Broads,
along with the San Juan Mountains Association, are hoping to mobilize the grass-roots
effort for the sake of the monument's health.
"The ATV phenomenon has mushroomed so quickly," said Ronni Egan, Great Old Broads executive director. "The chief of the Forest Service really stirred it up recently when he said that these machines are the greatest threat to the forest right now. Plus, the agencies are playing catch up. That's why citizen involvement is so crucial at this point."
Egan said that the groups plan to mobilize volunteers to document existing routes, both legal and user-created, and enter them into an existing resource. GINGER (Great Old Broads for Wilderness Interactive National Grassroots Evaluation Resource) is a part of the group's Healthy Lands Project and a database that is in place for Arch Canyon and Bridge Jack Mesa in Southern Utah. Using GPS units and digital cameras, volunteers have documented impacts from OHVs in both of those desert environs as well as other places. On the one hand, their monitoring has provided agencies with the information they need to enforce effective management plans. On the other, it has helped stave off crises.
Egan explained one volunteer's unpleasant discovery not long ago in Arch Canyon. The volunteer stumbled upon a user-created campsite near one of the region's only perennial streams. Sitting in the stream was a wooden chair with a hole cut out of the seat. Pieces of toilet paper were strewn about the area.
"If we see something like that, we take the photo and then call the agency and say 'you've got a problem,'" said Rose Chilcoat, Great Old Broads program director.
Great Old Broads and SJMA hope that their monitoring will help avert similar problems and offer the BLM crucial information for the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.
Gabi Morey, SJMA's stewardship coordinator for the monument, explained the simple but essential process.
"Volunteers will probably go out three or four times a year, adopt a route
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that they'll go on each time, and survey what damage has been done since their last visit," she said.
As to why the process is essential, Morey added, "The BLM, like any government agency, doesn't really have the manpower to be in the field all the time and keep track of what's going on. The project will tell them where they have problems. The idea is to give this information to the agency and then they can make decisions about whether to keep routes open or closed."
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| A view of ATV damage in Utah’s Arch Canyon. Impacts from ORVs,
equestrians, cross-country hikers and wood gathering are especially
damaging in fragile desert environments. Because of federal budget
shortfalls, they also usually go undocumented and unpunished. The GreatOld
Broads’ Healthy Lands Project hopes to step in and fill that
void. /Photo by Todd Newcomer. |
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As to why the process is essential, Morey added, "The BLM, like any government agency, doesn't really have the manpower to be in the field all the time and keep track of what's going on. The project will tell them where they have problems. The idea is to give this information to the agency and then they can make decisions about whether to keep routes open or closed."
The backbone of the effort will be collaboration, according to Chilcoat. "Yes, we're fierce and ferocious when it comes to protecting the land we love," she said of the Great Old Broads. "But we're also wise women who take a more intuitive approach."
In the case of the monument, the intuitive approach will involve getting the public to help take charge of public lands. "We want to help the agency with the planning process and give them a real picture of current conditions," Chilcoat said. "This will also engage citizens to go out on the land and channel their energy into productive directions."
The intuitive approach will go on from there to engage not just nonmotorized citizens, but all user groups. Egan stressed that the effort is not Great Old Broads against ATV users. She noted that among the collaborators will be an off-road club from Cortez.
"The responsible users understand that if somebody doesn't get a handle on these issues, whole areas will be closed to the public," Egan said. "They have a vested interest in helping with this program."
Chilcoat added, "In this kind of situation, eventually we discover that the 'other side' isn't really the 'other side.'"
LouAnn Jacobson, manager of the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, is excited to see the effort take shape. "We feel that volunteers and members of the community are always our best representatives," she said.
She added that the monument has "ongoing concerns" about off-road travel and that the volunteer effort will be crucial to documenting them. "Without them, it would be hit or miss," she said. "Areas would be noted by staff only if they happened to be in that area. It would not be a concerted effort."
Egan concluded by relating a situation where a concerted effort saw great success in Utah's San Rafael Swell. Two years ago, a group of Great Old Broads came upon an area so laced with ORV tracks it resembled "a bowl of spaghetti" from above. The group of 50 volunteers erected a pole fence, raked out the tracks and reseeded. Two years later, the acreage appears to be pristine.
"Even in these poor, hammered areas, if you remove the irritation, they will come back," Egan said.
The Great Old Broads, the SJMA and a group of volunteers plan to begin their efforts to identify the irritation in the Canyons of the Ancients in January of 2005.
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