Tom's Turn: Notes from our Senior Editor

Kane County Chutzpah

November 15, 2005

The action in Washington has been hot and heavy lately, with fights over the Arctic Refuge, the Endangered Species Act, Supreme Court nominations, and the misguided attempts to bifurcate the Ninth Circuit and "streamline" the National Environmental Policy Act. Beware of politicians talking about "streamlining" and "balance."

But there is life outside the beltway, and at least one case of spectacular chutzpah and defiance in southern Utah. We pass along the story from attorney Ted Zukoski, who practices his trade in Denver but spends much of his time defending Utah wildlands.

Kane County, in far southwest Utah, is an epicenter of slickrock. It contains most of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and pieces of Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. It is, in short, spectacular and more than worthy of protection.

The officials who run Kane County, meanwhile, for reasons all their own, have decided to make their county an epicenter for all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes. When the federal Bureau of Land Management put up signs telling off-road vehicle drivers where they can and cannot drive their rigs in the monument, for example, county officials tore down the signs. Later, they erected their own signs inviting drivers onto the routes closed by BLM.

This past August the Kane officials outdid themselves: They adopted an ordinance opening to dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles numerous hiking trails in Bryce, Zion, Glen, and several proposed wilderness areas, areas where off-road vehicle use has been banned for decades.

The county, in other words, was placing itself above the federal government in managing federal lands.

Ted Zukoski, working with his Denver colleagues Jim Angell and McCrystie Adams, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and The Wilderness Society, gently pointing out that the county was in blatant violation of the Constitution, which proclaims bluntly that the laws of the United States government "shall be Supreme Law of the Land... the laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding." The case has yet to go to trial.

Arguments for the defense should be interesting.

Tom Turner, Senior Editor
yourturn@earthjustice.org