The BLM is busy erasing President Clinton’s conservation legacy, one management plan at a time. When 1.3 million acres north of the Grand Canyon were designated as two national monuments in the 90s, the intention was that they were to gain permanent protection. But according to the L.A. Times, the BLM’s first proposed management plan for the 3 million-acre Arizona Strip opens the doors to mining around the monuments, and within the monuments it allows grazing and motorized vehicle recreation, both cross-country and on up to 3,000 miles of roads. The plan calls into question the agency’s committment to protecting the largely untouched cultural resources of the area. From the article:

“The BLM says none of the proposed activities in the monuments would damage resources. But critics contend that the agency can’t claim that roads won’t damage archeological resources, considering the BLM doesn’t even know where all of the sites are.”

Apparently, 97 percent of the land within the two monuments has not been surveyed for archeological or paleontological sites. Again from the Times:

On a recent tour of Vermilion Cliffs, Rick Moore of the Grand Canyon Trust pointed out many archeological sites near roads, especially vulnerable to vandals. He showed one site atop the Paria Plateau where a road sliced though remnants of an early pueblo, the ruin’s low stone walls flanking the dirt road.

It’s always interesting to watch a big land management plan get ground-truthed. The devil is in the details.