This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Range Creek Canyon is a remarkable place with near vertical walls rising thousands of feet to the West Tavaputs Plateau. Nearly 400 archaeological sites including rock art panels, pit houses, granaries and others have been identified by the Natural History Museum of Utah. These are from the Fremont culture that occupied and farmed the valley about 1,000 years ago.

In 2001, the Wilcox family, who owned the ranch in the valley, sold it to the United States government. Later it was sold to the state. Today the ranch and two additional land sections, totaling 2,700 acres, are managed by the Natural History Museum of Utah under a long term lease from the state. BLM manages the surrounding land.

NHMU's goal is "preserving and enhancing important wildlife habitat … and protecting priceless archaeological and cultural resources." Now, for inexplicable reasons, NHMU and BLM want to reintroduce cattle into this sensitive area.

The Wilcox family deserves great credit for limiting access and protecting the archeological sites during their time in the Canyon. These sites were protected while nearby canyons such as Nine Mile Canyon have been pillaged by artifact hunters who have destroyed much of the historical record and values in those places. This situation argues for continuing the current limited walk-in access by permit only.

The legacy of livestock grazing in Range Creek Canyon has been the loss of much of the native plant community that included chest-high grasses seen by the early settlers. Today native grasses and flowers are replaced by cheatgrass and weeds from the century of grazing there. Grazing caused the loss of the bank stabilizing vegetation on Range Creek and, as a result, it has eroded severely, in places cut down by a dozen feet or more. The result is that the water storage in the Canyon has been greatly reduced due to the loss of this floodplain. Restoration, which began with removal of cattle in 2001, will take many decades.

The shift in the plant community has increased the likelihood of fires. In 2013, BLM with participation of the NHMU and state developed a proposal to treat sagebrush and forested vegetation to reduce fuels and create fire breaks. A second part of the proposal is to resume grazing livestock to control cheatgrass and reduce fire risk.

There is no grazing system that can selectively graze cheatgrass and weeds without grazing the native grasses, trampling the stream banks, removing willows and riparian vegetation and preventing restoration by natural processes. During a recent tour we observed the aftermath of a recent fire and reseeding efforts, and the recovering willows and cottonwoods along the creek. During the time the Wilcox Family ran the ranch, there were no fires, but it took stripping most of the vegetation from the land to remove sufficient fuels to prevent fires, leaving the degraded situation that exists today.

Our discussion during the tour revealed a great concern among NHMU staff regarding the risk of fire to their students. We provided recommendations to them for an alternative approach to restore the plant communities and address the fire risk. This would include such things as the fuel breaks created by BLM's proposal, incorporating a safety and evacuation plan with training for NHMU visitors and staff, treating the cheatgrass and weeds with herbicides, continuing irrigation around the field station and using the restoration process as an additional opportunity for students to do research. Over time, the plant communities can recover as can Range Creek itself. As the area of influence of the stream expands, an additional fire buffer is provided.

The question for BLM and the NHMU now is whether they will strive to protect and restore the archaeological and conservation values that NHMU's management plan emphasizes, or return to a path that devastated the ecology of the canyon and has the potential to damage the very archaeology that the NHMU is directed to protect.

John Carter is manager of the Yellowstone to Uintas Connection. He lives in Paris, Idaho.