California Condor plans spark local debate
A 19-year effort to establish the endangered California Condor in the wildlands around the Vermillion Cliffs and Zion National Park has widely been considered a success, with six birds released into the wild in 1996 growing to a population of 72 today.
But the idea of extending that effort into the more urbanized areas around St. George have area officials envisioning a future full of unwanted environmental protections and legal fights.
“You don’t know how far it’s going to go, and what it means 10 years from now,” Washington County Commissioner Alan Gardner said Monday, voicing concern about the proposals as outlined in the Bureau of Land Management’s draft management plans for a pair of National Conservation Areas in the county.
Condors that come into the area right now are subject to an “experimental” designation through the Endangered Species Act that allows wildlife officials to interfere when the birds come into conflict with human populations, but the BLM’s draft plans outline plans to do away with that designation within the conservation areas and potentially allow for a new introduction of the species. The Red Cliffs NCA sits directly north of central St. George, with the Beaver Dam Wash NCA about 10 miles west of the city limits.
“They haven’t been a big deal (with the experimental rule) so far, but with all the government regulations they’re trying to push down your throat all the time who knows what will happen,” Gardner said, saying he could see new rules for hunters — lead poisoning from bullets has been the condors’ biggest problem in the Vermillion Cliffs population — new restrictions on grazing and potentially lawsuits levied by environmental groups if the condor populations come into conflict with public land use.
A cooperative effort between wildlife biologists and government agencies is slowly nursing the population of condors back to health.
Once abundant along the western U.S. coast, the condors were driven to the brink of extinction by losses of habitat, natural predation, hunting and environmental contamination. By 1982, there were only 22 birds living birds left, and scientists started a captive breeding program to save the Condor from extinction.
The captive-bred birds were released into a reintroduction program at sites in California, Arizona and Baja California, with the total population reported at more than 430 today.
The program has helped attract an international audience of researchers and birding enthusiasts, which indicates that the condor’s presence could benefit Washington County economically by providing a tourism boost, said Mike Small, a retired biologist and longtime southern Utah conservation advocate.
“I think it’s a good example of a success story, and there aren’t a lot of success stories out there with these things,” he said.
However, Small said he wasn’t familiar enough with the plans to say whether it was a good idea to try any new releases closer to St. George, noting that he was surprised when he first read the idea in the BLM’s draft plans.
Chris Parish, field project supervisor for the Peregrine Fund, said the Vermillion Cliffs reintroduction effort has had no major issues conflicting with area communities, partly due to the experimental status that allows researchers to go in and get the condors when they come into conflict outside of federally protected areas like within the national park boundaries.
A majority of southwest Utah’s conservative political leadership have been pushing in recent weeks to stop any of the BLM’s proposed plans for the conservation areas from moving forward, with the front page of the Washington County website offering a link for residents to “oppose excessive land regulations specified by BLM’s Draft Resource Management Plans.”
The agency was tasked with developing the plans after passage of a the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009, a congressional action that outlined how different parts of Washington County’s vast public lands should be divvied up between wilderness protection, public use and development.
The 53,500-acre Beaver Dam NCA and 45,000-acre Red Cliffs NCA were created as part of the law, but area officials say promises made during the negotiations are not reflected in the draft plans.
Gardner argued that county officials weren’t given much say in development of the plans.
“So many of these issues, if we had just been allowed at the table like we kept requesting, would have been non-issues,” he said.
The deadline to comment on the draft plans is Thursday, also area officials have requested an extension. A final decision on the plan won't be made until next year.
To access the Draft Resource Management Plan for the Red Cliffs and Beaver Dam Wash conservation areas, visit http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en/fo/st__george.html. Copies are also made available for review at the St. George Field Office, 345 E. Riverside Drive in St. George.