Here in Utah . . .


I live in a small rural county, population-wise, with an awful lot of Federal (as distinct from Public) land. The big issue here in Emery County is whether we want the heart of our county, the San Rafael Swell should be made a national monument.


It's an attempt to head off having it made Wilderness, under the 1964 Wilderness Act, which means basically that nobody will ever go there anymore, except those young, tan, robust hikers who write letters for the Sierra Club. And when they get lost, the locals will have to go find them, but not with the Sheriff's Jeep Posse.


This area has done fine under multiple use management, but that is anathema to environmentalists who never saw anything outside the city limits they didn't want put into Wilderness.


Here, the Big Lie supporting "protecting" the desert is something called cryptogamic soil, the crust on the soil formed by tiny plant life, such as lichens, in the soil. This crust makes the ground "fragile" and it is said that one footprint destroys the crust, which takes 100 years to repair itself. Of course, this makes the soil susceptible to erosion.


The real reason this argument is made is to eliminate all vehicles, including mountain bicycles, from the area, and allow the hundreds of miles of dirt roads to return to nature, so that all the eco-luminati can pursue the mystic state they call the "Wilderness Experience" without their reverie being disturbed by the reminder that there are other people sharing the earth with them.


I believe that environmentalism has more in common with religions like Islam and Scientology, than it does with science or conservation. Once that was a jest, but the more of their rhetoric I read, the more I take it seriously.


These people view us locals, most of whom are the products of pioneer families who have grazed cattle out in the Swell for a hundred years, as ignorant yahoos who want to destroy the scenery. Actually, the cattlemen who know the land best, love it dearly, or they wouldn't be still wasting their time trying to make a living on horseback. Nobody here can get by just raising cows; they have to have other jobs, or an independent income from coalbed methane wells.


If there's anything the eco-nazis hate as much as logging, pavement and concrete, it's cattle. Just the sight of a cow pie is enough to ruin the Wilderness Experience. And they have set about removing all the cows from public lands, in order to let Mother Nature manage the area. It matters not one fig that Mother Nature has just burned up huge sections of Colorado and Arizona where the U.S.F.S. deferred to her management, while private forests run by wood products companies are doing just fine. But Nature knows best! Yeah, right.