Babbitt, appearing in Salt Lake City this weekend to promote his new book, Cities in the Wilderness, calls the creation of the 1.7 million-acre monument in southern Utah in 1996 one of the great environmental triumphs of the Clinton administration. And it stands, he says, as an example of how the federal government can and should take a proactive role in land-use planning that looks to the long-term future and benefits all Americans.

"The creation of the Grand Staircase was a major chapter in the history of our public lands," Babbitt said Monday from his law office in Washington, D.C. "As time goes on, more and more residents of Utah will come to see it as a great benefit for the entire state.

"There has always been opposition to these types of things. When Theodore Roosevelt declared the Grand Canyon as a national monument [it later was made a national park], my family was among the objectors. Now everybody claims on behalf of their ancestors that they encouraged it. These are places of enormous and enduring value."

But Babbitt acknowledges that he and Clinton erred when the president announced the creation of Grand Staircase-Escalante during that September's re-election campaign. Although they unveiled it with great fanfare, Clinton and Babbitt gave Utah leaders no advance word of what was coming, then compounded the problem by making the announcement from the south rim of the Grand Canyon - in Arizona.

Babbitt recalled in his book that the monument not only spawned a lawsuit by the state of Utah - later abandoned - but also the hostility of southern Utah residents was such that effigies of Clinton and his Interior secretary "dangled from the lampposts of the streets of Escalante."

Looking back, Babbitt called it a great learning experience that has since helped shape how the Interior Department interacts with local governments.

"We certainly could have done a better job of advance consultation," he said. "One of the great lessons of Grand Staircase was that need for advance consultation, which we [later] used across the West with great success. But traditionally, monuments were created in this way, at the 11th hour. In that context, Grand Staircase wasn't all that different, but it taught me about how we can do it better."

Babbitt believes that there is plenty of room for improvement in how the nation's public lands are managed today. Specifically, he wants more accountability in terms of how federal money is spent on land-use issues and projects.

"Shouldn't we have a national policy, or national objectives for dealing with issues like sprawl, the depletion of our river systems and the destruction of our coastal lands?" he said. "For every acre we save as open space, we lose 10,000 or even 100,000 to development. And a lot of this unplanned development is being subsidized by federal programs and agencies. How can we put this together in way that federal money sent to the states comes with a condition that there be a reasonable priority for the planning of open space and the maintenance of our rivers and streams? That's the larger issue."

Babbitt and the rest of the conservation community have looked on with dismay as many of the environmental gains made during Clinton's eight years in office have been dismantled by the Bush administration. But the former Interior secretary says he remains optimistic about the long-term future, citing efforts being made at the local and grass-roots level.

"I'm a student of conservation history and what I see are cycles," Babbitt said. "The trend over time has been a broader level of conservation and concern. But there are peaks and valleys. We had tremendous environmental activism under Theodore Roosevelt, then went through a drought in the '20s. We had another resurgence in conservation interest in the '30s, hit a lull in the '50s, then had a highly active period in the '60s and '70s. We're in one of those down periods again, but I'm as certain as I can be that we're getting to the end of this period and headed toward a new era of conservation and concern."

jbaird@sltrib.com

Babbitt appearances

Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt will make a pair of appearances in Salt Lake City on Saturday. Babbitt will speak at 10 a.m. at the Vieve Gore Concert Hall on the campus at Westminster College, 1840 S. 1300 East. At 1 p.m., he will give a talk and sign copies of his new book, Cities in the Wilderness, at the King's English Bookstore, 1511 S. 1500 East.