Escalante Wilderness Project
                              P.O. Box 652
                           Escalante UT 84726
                              435/826-4778
                        toripat@color-country.net
                                                     
Contact: Patrick Diehl or Tori Woodard

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 ESCALANTE WILDERNESS PROJECT CALLS ON GOVERNMENT TO
 STAND UP TO RANCHER INTIMIDATION

This year, putting a long-overdue stop to decades of BLM subservience to grazing permittees, Kate Cannon, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Manager, started enforcing the rules.

The allotments on 50 Mile Mountain were grazed to the ground. Cannon ordered the permittees to get their cows off before even worse damage was done to the land and the wild animals and plants that depend on its health.

It was as clear as crystal. If the BLM could not act to protect the land in a situation like this, when could it ever act? So Cannon acted.

Ever since, we have heard nothing but self-centered howling from the permittees and their rancher support system, and we have seen nothing but interference, undercutting, second-guessing, sidestepping, and crawfishing from higher levels of the federal government, including both Utah BLM and the Utah federal attorney's office. Now the U.S. attorney is negotiating with one of the permittees, despite the fact that the same permittee flagrantly violated the order to get his cows off in a timely fashion, despite the fact that a group of ranchers recently stole legally impounded cattle from the government. To top it all off, the U.S. attorney has now ordered the BLM to halt the impoundments. The land can go hang while the authorities try to placate the ranchers. Next, we expect to hear that the fines levied on the permittees have been rescinded, and the cows meekly returned to them.

Why is this happening? It's no mystery. The government officials are afraid-afraid of a confrontation, afraid of another "Sagebrush Rebellion," afraid of losing their jobs. The ranchers have them buffaloed.

Kate Cannon lives in Kanab, in the midst of these bullies. We live in Escalante, in the midst of these bullies. The other federal officials involved in this sordid tale-where do they live? Salt Lake City, hundreds of miles from the center of the storm. Show some backbone, people! Call the ranchers' bluff! They are 99.99% hot air. The other .01% consists of their sons, who may find the courage to throw a rock through your car window at 1 AM, if they're sure they can make a safe getaway. The government will replace your window, if that happens.

We demand that the U.S. attorney arrest the culprits in the Salina cattle heist, including the county sheriff who let the thieves rob the government right in front of him. We demand that the BLM revoke the permits of the 50 Mile Mountain permittees: Quinn Griffin, Gene Griffin, and Mary Bulloch. The forage on the allotments should be assigned to wildlife. Furthermore, BLM should end grazing on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument altogether. The plants and animals will thank them; the public will no longer have to subsidize the destruction of these public lands; and the BLM will no longer have to deal with a set of posturing blowhards. Enough is enough!

                                 - EWP -