While there has been little hard-rock mining development along the rivers in recent years, Norton's order will prevent any new mining claims for the next 20 years from rim to rim in the canyons carved by the rivers, covering, in all, 111,895 acres.
We are very pleased that this will ensure the protection of these areas, Norton said in an interview Friday. The rim-to-rim protection will allow boaters and people driving along these waterways in the canyon to continue to see beautiful vistas.
The picturesque river corridors, which run past Arches National Park, Dead Horse Point and Fisher Towers, are immensely popular with river rafters and tours, which draw more than 150,000 river runners each year and bring more than $4 million in retail sales to the area economy.
Norton said she has been struck by what a gorgeous stretch of canyon the Colorado River Canyon is.
The action also would protect 161 prehistoric sites and habitat for six threatened and endangered species along the river corridors.
Plans for the mining withdrawal were launched in December 1999. The Utah director of the federal Bureau of Land Management signed the document in April 2003, but it took time to be approved by Interior Department officials in Washington.
The announcement comes as part of a Western swing in which Norton is seeking to bring to the forefront President Bush's accomplishments on the environment, which polls have shown is a weakness for Bush.
On Monday, she will be cutting the ribbon at the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado and on Tuesday will be announcing a species conservation plan in Phoenix. Norton said the timing of the withdrawal was not motivated by the Nov. 2 presidential election.
We certainly wanted to be sure that this was done correctly and had support of local governments, Indian tribes and state and local governments, and it does, she said. It has been on my schedule of things to do for a number of months and I personally wanted to do this withdrawal myself.
Liz Thomas, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said the withdrawal is widely supported. But she expressed frustration at the Interior Department's decision to allow oil and gas development on some of the same lands.
At its most recent oil and gas lease sale on Sept. 8, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned off several parcels at the confluence of the Dolores and Colorado rivers just north of Fisher Towers, further north along the Colorado, and in Desolation Canyon along the Green River.
This is a nice withdrawal. I'm not putting that down at all, Thomas said. It's very frustrating to have her saying that 'We want to protect the scenery.' . . . It seems a little ironic that we're withdrawing it for hard rock mining but we're opening it for oil and gas drilling.
Interior Department spokesman Dan DuBray said land in the canyons was leased for oil and gas development, but there were restrictions prohibiting surface occupancy to preserve the river viewshed. The leases also are under protest by environmental groups, so no drilling will be allowed until the opposition is resolved.
Existing mining claims along the rivers will continue to be honored, although there are only a handful of those and they are not believed to be economically viable.
In recent years, the Bureau of Land Management office has had isolated cases where claim holders have bulldozed areas along the river, forcing the BLM to pay for a costly restoration of the so-called nuisance mining.
It is the first such withdrawal during Norton's term. There is an existing withdrawal for about 25 miles along the Dolores river from the Utah-Colorado border.
