Utah's Grand Staircase: The Right Path to Wilderness Preservation?

Abstract:     
In light of the acrimonious dispute over President Clinton's designation of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, the article takes the opportunity to review the course of Utah's red rock wilderness wars and propose some fixed stars that should guide withdrawal decisions in the future. To that end, the article first reviews the long-running Utah wilderness debate to elucidate the broader context for the anger generated by the designation of the Monument. Then, using the Grand Staircase controversy as a departure point, the article suggests that for future withdrawal decisions to maintain their ennobling quality, a different process is necessary. This insight comes from wilderness literature. As revealed in the philosophical writings of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Joseph Sax, and other preservationists as well as in the recreational writing of anglers, mountaineers and hunters, is that adherence to certain virtues in our interaction with wilderness redeems and ennobles us. This article concludes that the basic redeeming virtues articulated in wilderness literature - virtues like sportsmanship, restraint, deliberation, sensitivity to impact, and patient woodcraft - are also the fixed stars that should guide withdrawal decisions and, more generally, preservation advocacy and use of the Antiquities Act. The irony of the Grand Staircase designation process is that we value wilderness and the Monument for its ability to develop within us the very virtues that the administration seemed to ignore in securing the Monument.

Keywords: Public Land Law, Antiquities Act, National Monuments, Natural Resources Law

JEL Classifications: K32

Accepted Paper Series