Utahns flouting fed land rules?

RECAPTURE CANYON, San Juan County — It's a small gesture of defiance — a narrow metal bridge that allows off-road vehicles illegal access to this archaeologically rich canyon. But the modest structure, built by San Juan County officials on U.S. government land, is a symbol of the widespread local resistance to federal authority across much of southern Utah's magnificent countryside.

Historically, people in the rural West have challenged federal jurisdiction, claiming ownership over rights of way, livestock management and water use. But nowhere is the modern-day defiance more determined, better organized or well-funded than in Utah, where millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent fighting federal authority, and where the state government is helping to pay the tab, much of it, critics say, without oversight.

For the past decade the Utah Legislature and two state agencies have been funneling money to southern Utah counties to bankroll legal challenges to federal jurisdiction. Most recently, a state representative persuaded the Legislature to provide $100,000 to help finance a lawsuit by ranchers and two counties seeking to expand cattle grazing in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Grand Staircase is one of a dozen parks and monuments that draw tens of millions of visitors to the region every year to take in the spectacular high desert and red-rock canyons that have awed travelers since John Wesley Powell voyaged down the Green and Colorado rivers in 1869.

"This is a beautiful and unique land," said Bill Smart, retired editor of Salt Lake City's Deseret Morning News. "It's distressing that we can't all be more appreciative of the values that other people see here. To me it's very disappointing that our own people can't see what we have."

In southern Utah, where the federal government controls as much as 90 percent of the land in some counties, many residents feel they are permanent tenants on land their ancestors pioneered. The resentment hardens whenever the Washington, D.C., landlord imposes restrictions on ranching, mining, energy development and motorized recreation.

"Who gets to control the land is the great American story," said Karl Jacoby, associate professor of history at Brown University. "In part it is about economics, but a lot of it is about identity and who we are as a people."

Officials of one county have written a bill pending in Congress that orders the sale of federal land, with the proceeds given to the county. Other Utah counties have said they would follow suit. And officials from the two counties surrounding Grand Staircase have lobbied in Washington to dramatically reduce the 2-million-acre national monument.