Cattle could return to Escalante tributaries under new Grand Staircase monument plan

Back in the 1990s, Utah rancher Dell LeFevre was riding his federal grazing allotment along the Escalante River when his horse tripped. Its leg fractured as it collapsed, and the rancher spent the next three hours pinned under the disabled animal until he rescued himself in a flash of inspiration. “It dawned on me when I was in the Army, an old mule guide told me if you pour water in a mule’s ear, they will move,” LeFevre said. He reached for a bottle of warm cola he had with him and emptied it into the ear of his stricken horse, triggering enough motion for the rancher to pull himself free. Walking back toward home, he decided running his cattle along the river had become too much of a hassle. LeFevre would later cut a deal with environmentalists to abandon his allotments along the Escalante and elsewhere in what was then the new Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Under a new management plan, however, some of this land, including Escalante tributaries such as Death Hollow, may soon see the return of bovines after two decades without grazing. In a recent interview from his home in Boulder, the former Garfield County commissioner explained why he agreed to give up his allotments. Federal land managers had gradually narrowed LeFevre’s grazing season; extremists shot 24 of his cows and put sand in his vehicles’ engines; and his livestock operation was the target of countless complaints by monument visitors flocking to the Escalante and its side canyons. “When they took away summer grazing, it grew over, and now you can’t even hike it,” said LeFevre, who at age 80 and undergoing chemotherapy still ranches elsewhere on the monument. “They put so much pressure on me, it wasn’t worth it.” In the late 1990s, he and several other ranchers retired their allotments, totaling about 64,000 acres or less than 4% of the monument, receiving compensation from the Grand Canyon Trust and other conservation funders. The deal won the support of Utah’s governor and wildlife agency and drew plaudits from Gale Norton, a conservative lawyer who served as then-President George W. Bush’s Interior secretary...MORE