Moab's Labyrinth Canyon--Future Off-Roading Sacrifice Area?

The "spaghetti" network of proposed motorized route designations pictured here is the result of a years-long process. (The image was created in Google Earth using the BLM's data layer. You may also view it in your own Google Earth browser using this file where you'll be able to zoom in close and fly around the mesas and canyons on your own.) It represents the BLM's "preferred alternative" in their new proposed management plan for the Moab area's famous landscape of red canyons, mesas and arches. The vast majority of these routes are artifacts of uranium mining and uncontrolled cross-country ORV use--they were never planned, analyzed, or engineered. Route networks such as this carve up the landscape, resulting in a plan that leaves only 12% of public lands in the Moab area more than half a mile away from a road.

The closed-door talks between various branches of government were numerous and intensive, deciding the fate of 1.8 million acres of southeast Utah's famous canyon country.

Talking in the abstract, the state of Utah, the Moab BLM, and representatives of Grand County (Moab) all claim that this was a model of healthy collaboration, resulting in a reasonable plan that everyone can be proud of.

But no one seems to want to claim responsibility for Labyrinth Canyon and the high mesas around it.

The county government, which submitted the route inventory that the Moab BLM used to make its map, says that most of the short redundant routes on these mesas were mostly requested by the BLM's range department.

The Moab BLM office says that they designated many of these routes because Jeep Safari asked for them.

Jeep Safari's map includes only a fraction of the routes shown here, primarily covering well-established routes that no one disagrees with. (The route into Labyrinth Canyon and along the Green River, however, is at this time purely for off-road vehicle purposes. The county says that they didn't ask for it).

So why all the extra routes--routes that don't reach a destination, that duplicate the purpose of other routes, and that promise to mar a lovely mesa complex and a spectacular calm-water river float with further off-road vehicle damage?

Representatives of the county shrug and say that the area was pretty torn up during the uranium boom in the 1950s. The BLM recreation department tells a newspaper that there's no reason not to designate deep tire tracks as permanent roads. The damage has already been done, they say, and no further harm can come from people driving on old tracks.

Despite the obvious problems with this last claim (doesn't the BLM read the research done by the USGS field office right across the highway?), this seems to be their last line of defense.

In the end, it comes down to this attitude, expressed in an article in Colorado's Grand Junction Sentinel:

Wayne McFetridge of Grand Junction said he went to Thursday’s meeting because he heard the BLM wanted to close “everything” to ATV use. He said he’d like the BLM to keep Utah’s public lands completely open to off-road vehicles by not changing its new management scheme for the area.
“That land over there isn’t good for much else,” he said.

The Moab area--incuding Labyrinth Canyon--deserves better from its visitors, and even more so from its residents and stewards.

If you are a resident of, or visitor to, the Moab area, you probably have an opinion. If you'd like to help out by expressing that Moab's landscape should NOT be a motor sport sacrifice area, the most effective way to do so is to send a letter to the editor of the local Moab newspaper, The Times-Independent, and/or to the Salt Lake Tribune. It always helps to hear from people who enjoy the beauty of the natural landscape without practicing high-impact recreation.