The Vermilion Cliffs Heritage Plan

Heritage Plan Maps
Route/Recreation Plan Pie Charts

The lands managed by the Kanab Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management contain an interesting array of flora, fauna, landscapes, and human and geological history. Scattered throughout this resource area are lush riparian zones, arid sand dunes, numerous archeological sites, historical remnants of pioneers, and stands of pinion, juniper and ponderosa.

The Kanab resource area is surrounded by some of Utah’s most recognized and majestic areas: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks. However, that is not to say that this area is void of its own treasures. Parunuweap and Orderville Canyons border Zion National Park and rival it in magnificence. Kanab Creek, Trail and Pugh Canyons are rare riparian gems, supporting a diversity of life unexpected in this otherwise hot, dry desert. Moquith Mountain is known for its mix of rolling, coral-colored dunes and high elevation stands of ponderosa pine. The Vermilion Cliffs were used extensively by earlier civilizations and contain a wealth of cultural resources, the majority not yet studied and recorded.

It has been over 25 years since the Kanab Field Office produced a document directing how these lands should be managed. In the past two decades, off-road vehicle use has exploded in the area, and the current management plan is woefully inadequate in addressing this form of recreation. Unmitigated ORV use has occurred on these unique lands with no plan for resource protection, including wildlife habitat and cultural sites, and no plan for providing non-motorized users a place free of the sights and sounds of ORVs. Furthermore, BLM needs to update its plans for extractive resource and energy development and take into account the value Americans put on wilderness and undeveloped areas, especially in the face of a rapidly diminishing cache of wild places in this country.

In these new planning documents, BLM must ensure its decisions make sense 15-20 years into the future, even when visitation levels have doubled or tripled. Resource management plan decisions are not a time for short-sighted thinking, especially in the transportation and energy components..

Transportation and Off-Road Vehicles
The current road and trail network in the Kanab area is the unplanned result of unmitigated off-road vehicle use. This spider web network of trails has exponentially increased as the number of ORV users recreating on public lands has sky-rocketed over the last two decades. This, coupled with BLM’s failure to develop transportation plans, including maps of where people can and cannot drive, has proven disastrous for many archeological and biological resources. As the web of newly pioneered ORV routes has increased, the areas that non-motorized users value for quiet recreation such as wildlife viewing, horseback riding, bicycling and hiking have decreased proportionately.

BLM should develop a sensible, evenhanded transportation plan based on the following principles:

• Vehicles should be restricted to designated roads and trails throughout the entire resource areas -- no "open" ORV play areas. Even some off-road vehicle advocacy groups agree that unrestricted driving off of established routes is no longer acceptable. (This does not mean that there cannot be ORV-emphasis areas where there is a high density of designated routes.)
• All routes should serve some identifiable purpose. If there is no compelling reason for a route to stay open, then it should be closed. (For example, ORV trails and old cow trails that lead to nowhere should be closed.)
• The transportation plan must continue to make sense until the next management plan revision, 15 to 20 years from now. Use levels will almost certainly be much higher then. Any routes designated open now will almost certainly see very high use levels in the future, so these routes must be capable of sustaining high use without causing ecological damage or ruining the peace and quiet that most visitors come here to experience.
• There needs to be adequate opportunities for both motorized and non-motorized recreation, while avoiding conflicts between these two groups.
• Many of the most pervasive threats to biological diversity -- habitat destruction and fragmentation, edge effects, exotic species invasions, pollution (noise, petrochemical, and heavy metal), sedimentation, and over-hunting -- are exacerbated by the existence of roads.
• According to BLM’s own studies, the existence of roads clearly exacerbates the threats and vandalism to the world-class cultural resources of Southern Utah.
• In order to facilitate enforcement, there should be a "closed unless signed open" policy. The large majority of visitors to the area want to obey the law and stay on designated trails. This policy makes it very easy for visitors to determine what's legal and what's not.
• As use levels increase, combining non-motorized and motorized users on the same trail system becomes unacceptable. No one likes hiking, mountain biking or riding horses on a trail crowded with motorcycles and ATVs. There needs to be a fair allocation between motorized and non-motorized users.
• Ecologically damaging routes, such as routes through riparian areas or important wildlife habitat, should be closed.
• There needs to be adequate opportunities to get out of earshot of motorized trails. Currently the large majority of the lands BLM manages are within 1 mile of a motorized road or trail. This is not acceptable in Southern Utah, one of the most remote and unspoiled parts of the lower 48. Therefore many routes which penetrate deeply into otherwise roadless areas should be closed, in order to have a more balanced spectrum of near-road and far-from-a-road recreational opportunities.

Oil and Gas
The threats to this world-famous landscape are great and growing, as oil and gas leasing in this area is increasing. Even though such leasing is purely speculative there are no established fields in this area and returns are extremely marginal outside of established fields any development leaves behind polluted drill pads, toxic sludge pits, and a large and unwieldy system of roads that are oftentimes bulldozed up the sides of steep canyons and blasted through ancient walls of rock, permanently scarring this world-class scenery.

Citizens should urge the Kanab BLM to protect sensitive areas from oil and gas leasing, including areas proposed for wilderness designation, riparian areas, critical wildlife habitat, and cultural resource areas.  New oil and gas leases should be allowed only in areas that have the necessary existing infrastructure (such as roads, pipelines, power lines, etc).