Living History
The National Landscape Conservation System protects the past but its future is uncertain
Annette McGivney
Time travel, according to most reputable sources, is not possible. There is, however, one exception: the National Landscape Conservation System. Whether paddling the route of Lewis and Clark on the Upper Missouri, walking in the wagon ruts of 19th-century pioneers in Nevada's Black Rock Desert, or viewing 1,000-year-old dwellings in southeastern Colorado, visitors to this little-known collection of federal lands can literally step back in time as they explore vast landscapes that have remained unchanged through the centuries. But if current political trends continue, time may be running out for these rare treasures.
Encompassing 26 million acres of the West overseen by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the NLCS was established five years ago to protect some of America's lesser known crown jewels. The system contains a diverse collection of national conservation areas, national monuments, wild and scenic rivers, national scenic and historical trails, and wilderness areas. These 800 units are the BLM’s most scenic and historically important lands. Like the National Park System, the NLCS protects outstanding natural and cultural resources, but it also protects the wild and expansive landscapes around the landmarks.
“The original vision was to protect entire landscapes, not just individual historic or archaeological sites,” explains Jill Ozarski, program associate in The Wilderness Society's Four Corners office. “When you look at a pueblo, you can also still see the landscape seen by the people who lived in the pueblo. The system protects the places where the history of the West is still written on the land.”
Take, for example, central Montana’s Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. If Lewis and Clark were to repeat their historic journey today, one of the few places they would recognize is the undeveloped landscape in Upper Missouri Breaks. The monument includes the 150-mile Wild and Scenic stretch of the Upper Missouri River, the premier segment of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. But, beyond the river banks, the monument also protects a vast northern prairie ecosystem that looks just as it did when the famous explorers walked through it 200 years ago. Hikers will find the same odd-shaped rocks, sculpted badlands, and scenic campsites that Lewis and Clark described in their journals.
Other jewels in the NLCS treasure chest include Colorado's Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, featuring the highest concentration of ancestral puebloan sites anywhere in the U.S. (6,000 documented so far), and Arizona's million-acre Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, which not only contains important archaeological sites but also the watersheds that feed into the Grand Canyon. These preserves are among the 15 national monuments on BLM lands created between 1996 and 2001.
“The whole idea behind the NLCS was to imbue the BLM with a conservation mission and to get away from the historic view that the agency was just a piggy bank of give-away lands,” former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt recently recalled. “I felt it was very important for the BLM to take on this new objective, and the agency was very receptive to the idea of landscape-scale conservation.”
Unfortunately, the Bush administration, which inherited the NLCS in 2001, does not share Babbitt's vision. Created in June 2000, the system enjoyed a bang-up first year with new funding and administrative enthusiasm that has been followed by four years of, at best, anemic support. “The NLCS is a new concept for conservation, but five years later the news is not good,” contends Ozarski.
Rob Roudabush, group manager for National Conservation Areas and National Monuments at the BLM, admits that “the current administration has different priorities,” and the NLCS is way down on the list.
A decline in funding, along with development threats and destruction caused by vandalism and unregulated off-road vehicle (ORV) use, led the National Trust for Historic Preservation in June 2005 to include the entire NLCS on its annual “11 Most Endangered Historic Places” list. “There are invaluable cultural and natural resources on all of these lands,” notes Mike Smith, public lands counsel for the Trust. “The listing is not intended to point the finger at the BLM but to raise awareness in Washington and among the public that these resources are in danger. We want the Department of Interior to take the system's conservation mission to heart.”
Only three percent of the BLM's national monument lands have been surveyed for archaeological sites, wildlife, or sensitive plants, so in most cases, the agency doesn't even know what is being lost. In November 2004 The Wilderness Society and the National Trust surveyed at-risk archaeological sites at Grand Canyon-Parashant and Vermilion Cliffs National Monuments in northern Arizona. “We found many sites from the ancestral pueblo period (11th and 12th century) as well as more recent Paiute sites,” says Peter Bungart, a Flagstaff-based archaeologist who led the inventory. “At both monuments we did find some signs of looting as well as general destruction. We encountered an ancient roasting pit area that had ATV tracks right through the middle of it.” In his report to the BLM, Bungart will suggest that the many little-used roads in the monuments be closed and ORV use regulated so it does not threaten cultural sites. “The farther someone has to walk to a site the less chance there is for looting,” he says.
Lanell Poseyesvna, an archaeologist and member of the Hopi tribe who participated in the survey, echoes Bungart. "The ATVs are going into remote areas, and the destruction they cause is literally erasing parts of our historic record," she says. During the inventory in Grand Canyon-Parashant, Poseyesvna says she found petroglyphs supporting the migration stories of the Hopi Sand and Lizard clans moving from Utah into Arizona. "For Native Americans, our history is written on the landscape; these sites are our historic record," Poseyesvna adds. "We just inventoried a small part of the monument. I'm sure we'll discover more Hopi cultural history with more inventories."
So, what can be done to save the NLCS and the resources within it? According to Wendy Van Asselt, who heads The Wilderness Society’s NLCS program, there are four key strategies. “First, funding must be increased,” says Van Asselt. “Right now the NLCS units are getting about $2 per acre, compared to $18 in national parks; one ranger per 180,000 acres is typical. There's no funding for the monitoring of species, water quality, and cultural resources—many of the very things that the NLCS was set up to protect.”
The visionary system also needs to be made “permanent” and institutionalized within the agency so that it will not fall victim to changing administrations with clashing priorities, notes Van Asselt. A third strategy is to work with the BLM and interested citizens to make sure that the long-term plans being drawn up for the individual units provide meaningful protection. The Wilderness Society’s western field offices are deeply involved in this effort.
Lastly, but perhaps most important, the public needs to know about the NLCS and the opportunities for education and recreation on system lands. “We want to expand the constituency of the NLCS, especially among educators and archaeologists,” Van Asselt explains. The Wilderness Society directs the national Discover NLCS Coalition (), ran a photo contest to dramatize the scenic wonders of the system, and recently released a at the five-year mark. (.)
One indication of the NLCS’s potential is Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. Now approaching its tenth anniversary, the first national monument to be entrusted to the BLM has not only survived early attempts to roll back the designation but has thrived as a tourist destination that promotes resource conservation rather than development.
Monument manager Dave Hunsaker is proud that the monument has opened four visitor centers in communities around the 1.9-million-acre preserve. He says being part of the NLCS helps the monument “tell its story” to visitors and support its conservation mission. “We want the message to get out to the public that BLM lands are not what people have traditionally thought: just about what you can pull out of them. We can compete with any of the national park crown jewels.” As far as Hunsaker is concerned, this monument is not only protecting history but also making it.
Annette McGivney is Southwest Editor for Backpacker magazine and teaches wilderness and journalism courses at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
