What would you do if your hometown, where your family had lived for generations, became so valuable to powerful outsiders that you were no longer welcome in the land around it. That is happening to several small towns in southern Utah, where in many counties 95% of the land is held by federal government (see this map). One of these is a small town dear to my heart: Blanding, in San Juan county, the southeast corner of Utah, where my father grew up and where I spent several weeks each summer as a child with my grandparents.
Settled by Mormon pioneers in the late 1800s and early 1900s, this land had been mostly abandoned since the Pueblo people moved out in seven centuries previously. It is not an easy place to live--remote, arid, full of redrock and canyons. It was very difficult for pioneers to get there without roads, and roads continue to be very important.
Enter the Bureau of Land Management, a federal agency that has very little to do east of the Continental Divide, but has been a presence in the twelve western-most states since their settlement. In its previous iterations it was a management agency for cattle ranchers and miners who used the "land nobody wanted." My grandfather was a uranium miner in the canyons around Blanding, working with his sons to create roads to access the deposits (many classic family stories there).
Was it legal for my grandfather to construct roads on this land? Certainly. In 1866 the US Congress enacted Revised Statute 2477, which simply stated that "the right-of-way for the construction of highways across public lands not otherwise reserved for public purposes is hereby granted." Then in 1976, Congress enacted the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which upheld the former statute: "Nothing in this Act, or in any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed as terminating any valid lease, permit, patent, right-of-way, or other land use right or authorization existing on the date of approval of this Act". So in order to continue to use a road, it just had to be shown to have existed prior to 1976.
Now enter the environmentalists. For those not familiar with their tactics, let me just state that most of these groups are what might be called a "racket": allergic to what might be called "the American way," they demand a seat at the table where decisions are made that affect the lives of the average Joe. Whenever they see anything that doesn't fit with their anti-human agenda, they file a "citizen suit" to get their way. Government agencies with only vague guidelines to go on will frequently give way to their demands rather than face a costly lawsuit, and/or the groups win the cases mediated by liberal federal judges and receive boatloads of your tax dollars, with which they dream up their next assault. Federal lands have been on their bullying agenda for a while now.
The last player in this story is Phil Lyman, current San Juan County commissioner and my cousin's husband. I hate to say he's a really great guy since you'll think I'm prejudiced--but it's true. Watch just a bit of this interview, or some of the videos on this page, and you'll see for yourself--intelligent, brave, humble.
So back to the question:
1 - if a federal agency tells you that you can no longer use a road that your own ancestors helped build, the road through Recapture Canyon from Bluff to Monticello, because they say it's just a trail that was built in 2005, and
2 - if the laws that govern the agency are clearly contrary to what the agency doing, and
3 - if they say in 2007 that the road is just closed temporarily for two years, but now it's 2014 and they refuse to take any action on reopening it, then what do you do?
If I were a citizen of Blanding I would raise this issue at a town hall meeting, and that's just what happened in February 2014. And if I were charged with protecting the rights of the citizens of the county, I'd do just what Phil did--support the citizens' right to protest an illegal action on the part of the BLM. He communicated what was planned (listen to the phone interview between Phil and Utah BLM director Juan Palma), and tried to make sure that everyone would be safe.
There has been plenty of news coverage of the events surrounding the May 10, 2014 protest ride through Recapture Canyon, but unfortunately most of it has been wrong. There was no illegal action because the road closure itself was illegal. There was no damaged Pueblan archaeology because it had all been cleared when the road had been assessed years ago. The road had been used from 2007 to 2009 to access a small mine, it is also the site of a water pipeline that was installed in the road bed, and the road is also used by ranchers during a cattle drive twice a year. Clearly the 50 foot right of way through the canyon is not pristine wilderness, needing to be kept inviolate from the tires of any vehicles. Pueblans built their homes in the canyon walls, not the canyon bed.
The protest ride did no physical harm to the canyon, and the usual penalty for riding on a closed road would be around $100 to $200. But my cousin-in-law (along with Monte Wells, a local blogger with degrees in anthropology and archaeology) was convicted with conspiracy against the US government, along with riding on a closed road, and both face penalties of up to a year in prison, a $100,000 fine, and large penalties for restitution of the non-damage that was done by 50 or so ATV riders who showed up for the protest. And that is disgusting to me--clearly a miscarriage of justice.
So why do this thing? What's it all about? There is an increasing feeling in this area of the country that federal agencies are over-reaching their own legal authority, that Utah is being treated as if it were not a state, but still a territory. People "in the know" say that since 2009 the BLM has become much more aggressive. If civil disobedience is widely hailed as heroic by the liberal media when discussing Rosa Parks and Gandhi--and the Occupy Movement-- why such hateful backlash when it is used by conservatives (in the comment sections of the news reports, and in the penalty from the trial itself).
Here's a quote from Phil: I have said a number of times, this protest is not about Recapture, or about ATVs, it is about the jurisdictional creep of the federal government. I heard elected officials say that we need to find the “right” issue and then really jump on it. From my perspective, we have a chance every day to defend our local jurisdiction from the overreaching hand of the BLM and other federal agencies.
Last, here's what Senator Mike Lee has to say about an initiative to transfer control of federal lands back to the states.
For more information, see RecaptureInstitute.org
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