Arizona Monument Planning (Back to Landscapes Program Index)

The Arizona Strip Field Office is undertaking a Strip-wide planning process. Three separate land use management plans (one for each of the monuments and one for the balance of non-monument BLM lands) will be produced under one over-arching environmental impact statement. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement will be released in March of 2005. (Click here to view the Trust's scoping comments. (100KB PDF)) The Grand Canyon Trust is encouraging the agencies to take an ecosystem approach to management. The premise of the approach is that ecosystems are complex webs of organisms, habitats, and processes that have evolved over time and in a particular place. Biodiversity is a cornerstone of healthy functioning ecosystems—it is key to ensuring stable ecosystems with the capacity to respond to and recover from disturbance. Management plans that support decisions and actions that foster and protect diversity—genetic, species, habitat and ecosystem diversity—are critical to protect the ability of our landscapes to adapt to substantial environmental changes. Changes to an ecosystem can cause dramatic reductions in the population of species or even shift from one biological community to another over short periods of time.

The success of the monument plans will depend upon the application of the best available science, making educated judgments where timing does not permit immediate and intensive analysis, and the diligent application of the precautionary principle. Where conclusive scientific information to make well-founded, ecosystem based management decisions is lacking, a precautionary approach should be adopted so that actions that may have an adverse environmental impact are not taken and measures to prevent environmental degradation are not postponed. The precautionary approach should be applied in selecting each of the alternatives in the draft EIS.

National Monuments (Back to Landscapes Program Index)

President Clinton declared the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument and the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument on January 11, 2000 and November 9, 2000. The proclamations creating the national monuments identify "a vast, biologically diverse, impressive landscape encompassing an array of scientific and historic objects" and "outstanding objects of scientific and historic interest…natural splendor and a sense of solitude" as objects to be protected through the designation and management of the monuments. The Trust believes that all management practices and land uses must be evaluated in this context and that management plans must be written to ensure the protection of these incredible places.

The monuments are located in and area known as the Arizona Strip. The Arizona Strip consists of 2.8 million acres in the northwest corner of the state and is bounded by the Colorado River to the east and south, Nevada to the west, and Utah to the north. Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument is jointly managed by the BLM and the National Park Service.

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