Strip Poker

Agreeing to a wilderness pact

The Arizona Strip has long been an eagerly contested prize. Six million acres of largely federally owned desert, forest, canyons and mountains, it stretches 60 miles from the Grand Canyon in northwest Arizona up to the Utah border. Environmentalists, impressed by the region's spectacular scenery and rare wildlife, have wanted part of it declared a protected wilderness area. Developers, coveting the mineral deposits, among them perhaps the richest veins of uranium in the U.S., have been pressing for the area to be opened to mining.

Frustratingly for both sides, the strip's most prized 1 million acres have been locked up under the Government's "wilderness study" classification. Faced with a limbo designation that can extend for years, the environmentalists and developers, traditionally at loggerheads, took the unusual step of negotiating with each other. The result: an unprecedented agreement that is the basis of a bill introduced in Congress last month as the Arizona Strip District Wilderness Act. Says Russell Butcher of the National Parks and Conservation Association, a private environmental group, who was a key figure in initiating the discussions: "Considering the confrontational approach that has marked most wilderness issues, this was real pioneering."

Under the joint proposal, 394,900 acres of public land will be added to the wilderness system, while another 673,000 acres will be returned to "multiple use" status. Both sides made substantial concessions. The environmentalists gave up claims to some of the most majestic sections of the Grand Wash Cliffs at the strip's western edge. Energy Fuels Corp., a uranium-and coal-mining concern, agreed to the costly process of extracting ore from the top rather than the bottom of the Kanab Creek Canyon's 250 million-year-old columnlike rock formations so as to minimize environmental damage. Says Pamela Hill of Energy Fuels: "It was like trading baseball cards."

The discussions, which began last January in Phoenix, were frequently heated. Says Negotiator Michael Scott of the Wilderness Society: "Each side acknowledged the other had a legitimate right to use the land, but we hit impasses." When the talks turned especially harsh, the participants adjourned to drink beer in a local pub.

Once an agreement was reached in March, the negotiators began lobbying local Chambers of Commerce, county commissioners, and ranchers who graze cattle on the strip. In Washington, the measure has strong bipartisan support and is expected to pass both the Senate and the House in this session. One index of its acceptability: a leading sponsor is Arizona Democrat Bob Stump, who has never voted for a wilderness bill during his seven years in the House. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.