Years ago, I lived in Utah's oil and gas country. Those two products formed the majority of the regional economy. Most of the activity took place in an area known as the Book Cliffs. To be fair, parts of the Book Cliffs are absolutely breathtaking. But there is also a substantial amount of land out there that is empty space, scrub brush, and rocks.
Starting in the Obama administration, there was a quasi-steady stream of protests from environmentalists who were angry, aghast, and appalled at the oil and gas rigs. Some of it was over the role fossil fuels play in climate change. The other point of contention was the effect drilling would have on the environment, including the plant and animal species, the view shed, etc.
I did some work down there when I was in firefighting. I did a little suppression but mostly fuels management. There isn't much down there, but the environmental groups, some of whom had substantial lobbying power, went all out to shut down the energy industry. The word on the street was that the activists were planning to plant rebar in the roads to wreck the trucks, which, if true, could have killed someone.
I suppose environmental outrage is contingent on who is doing the building and why. Consider the irony of this story highlighted by KUTV.
Leeds, Utah, is located on the southern end of the state. There is quite a bit of open space in southern Utah, along with some spectacular national parks. It is well worth a trip to the region. Pam Johnson's family had a grazing permit in the Leeds area. In the '90s, the family lost the permit when the area was designated part of a Desert Wildlife Management Area to protect the desert tortoise.
Pam sought relief through Utah's congressional delegation and appealed to the BLM and U.S. Fish and Wildlife, to no avail. That scenario is not uncommon in the West. In addition to tortoises, I have seen concerns raised over sage grouse and Graham's Bearded Penstemon. At one point, the Mexican Wolf was being considered as an addition to the threatened/endangered list. One exasperated county commissioner explained to me that the rationale was that, at some point, a Mexican Wolf might wander up from Mexico and into the Uintah Basin.
But back to Leeds. The area where the Johnsons ran their cattle is getting quite the facelift. Bulldozers have shown up to prep the land for a brand-new housing development, a retail space, and a hotel. Wait, a hotel?
Just so we're all clear, the desert tortoise could not co-exist with grazing cattle, but they should be fine with housing development, retail space, and a hotel. Granted, I'm no wildlife biologist, but it stands to reason that tortoises fare better with cows than hotels, shops, and housing developments.
Utah is very arid, and southern Utah is even more so. Current residents are concerned about the effect new development will have on the water supply, particularly during fire season. The construction zone also has archeological value, as it is home to potsherds, complete and partial arrowheads, and even drill tips.
So what changed? What turned a plot of land that would suffer greatly under bovine grazing into a spot for prime real estate development? Back in the '90s, it was sacrosanct. Now, it's a business opportunity. Your theory is as good as mine, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would say money has something to do with it.
One of the things that used to make Utah great was the fact that it took thirty minutes tops to leave your home and end up deep in the forest or desert with nary a soul around to bother you. We have had bears amble through our camp as well as some indeterminate two-legged creature taking an interest in our campsite. We've even been profiled by mountain lions, and once, a herd of elk took a stroll through our camp. There is nothing quite like the feeling of waking up in the mountains on a chilly morning, poking up the fire, and hearing... absolutely no one.
But those spaces are getting harder and harder to find. This past summer, we went hiking to a hot spring in the Uinta Wasatch Cache National Forest. The trail was littered with garbage and bikini tops, and a rock wall was covered in graffiti. Aside from that, the ranges are turning into subdivisions, and homes that only certain people can afford continue to crawl up the slopes of the mountains.
What used to be free, open, and pristine space is now apparently up for sale to the highest bidder, corporate or private. This, of course, raises a question that will likely never be satisfactorily answered: just who or what has the government been saving all that space for?
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