[Federal Register Volume 61, Number 186 (Tuesday, September 24, 1996)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 50223-50227]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 96-24716]
[[Page 50221]]
_______________________________________________________________________
Part VIII
The President
_______________________________________________________________________
Proclamation 6920--Establishment of the Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument
Presidential Documents
Federal Register / Vol. 61, No. 186 / Tuesday, September 24, 1996 /
Presidential Documents
___________________________________________________________________
Title 3--
The President
[[Page 50223]]
Proclamation 6920 of September 18, 1996
Establishment of the Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument's vast
and austere landscape embraces a spectacular array of
scientific and historic resources. This high, rugged,
and remote region, where bold plateaus and multi-hued
cliffs run for distances that defy human perspective,
was the last place in the continental United States to
be mapped. Even today, this unspoiled natural area
remains a frontier, a quality that greatly enhances the
monument's value for scientific study. The monument has
a long and dignified human history: it is a place where
one can see how nature shapes human endeavors in the
American West, where distance and aridity have been
pitted against our dreams and courage. The monument
presents exemplary opportunities for geologists,
paleontologists, archeologists, historians, and
biologists.
The monument is a geologic treasure of clearly exposed
stratigraphy and structures. The sedimentary rock
layers are relatively undeformed and unobscured by
vegetation, offering a clear view to understanding the
processes of the earth's formation. A wide variety of
formations, some in brilliant colors, have been exposed
by millennia of erosion. The monument contains
significant portions of a vast geologic stairway, named
the Grand Staircase by pioneering geologist Clarence
Dutton, which rises 5,500 feet to the rim of Bryce
Canyon in an unbroken sequence of great cliffs and
plateaus. The monument includes the rugged canyon
country of the upper Paria Canyon system, major
components of the White and Vermilion Cliffs and
associated benches, and the Kaiparowits Plateau. That
Plateau encompasses about 1,600 square miles of
sedimentary rock and consists of successive south-to-
north ascending plateaus or benches, deeply cut by
steep-walled canyons. Naturally burning coal seams have
scorched the tops of the Burning Hills brick-red.
Another prominent geological feature of the plateau is
the East Kaibab Monocline, known as the Cockscomb. The
monument also includes the spectacular Circle Cliffs
and part of the Waterpocket Fold, the inclusion of
which completes the protection of this geologic feature
begun with the establishment of Capitol Reef National
Monument in 1938 (Proclamation No. 2246, 50 Stat.
1856). The monument holds many arches and natural
bridges, including the 130-foot-high Escalante Natural
Bridge, with a 100 foot span, and Grosvenor Arch, a
rare ``double arch.'' The upper Escalante Canyons, in
the northeastern reaches of the monument, are
distinctive: in addition to several major arches and
natural bridges, vivid geological features are laid
bare in narrow, serpentine canyons, where erosion has
exposed sandstone and shale deposits in shades of red,
maroon, chocolate, tan, gray, and white. Such diverse
objects make the monument outstanding for purposes of
geologic study.
The monument includes world class paleontological
sites. The Circle Cliffs reveal remarkable specimens of
petrified wood, such as large unbroken logs exceeding
30 feet in length. The thickness, continuity and broad
temporal distribution of the Kaiparowits Plateau's
stratigraphy provide significant opportunities to study
the paleontology of the late Cretaceous Era. Extremely
significant fossils, including marine and brackish
water mollusks, turtles, crocodilians, lizards,
dinosaurs, fishes, and mammals, have been recovered
[[Page 50224]]
from the Dakota, Tropic Shale and Wahweap Formations,
and the Tibbet Canyon, Smoky Hollow and John Henry
members of the Straight Cliffs Formation. Within the
monument, these formations have produced the only
evidence in our hemisphere of terrestrial vertebrate
fauna, including mammals, of the Cenomanian-Santonian
ages. This sequence of rocks, including the overlaying
Wahweap and Kaiparowits formations, contains one of the
best and most continuous records of Late Cretaceous
terrestrial life in the world.
Archeological inventories carried out to date show
extensive use of places within the monument by ancient
Native American cultures. The area was a contact point
for the Anasazi and Fremont cultures, and the evidence
of this mingling provides a significant opportunity for
archeological study. The cultural resources discovered
so far in the monument are outstanding in their variety
of cultural affiliation, type and distribution.
Hundreds of recorded sites include rock art panels,
occupation sites, campsites and granaries. Many more
undocumented sites that exist within the monument are
of significant scientific and historic value worthy of
preservation for future study.
The monument is rich in human history. In addition to
occupations by the Anasazi and Fremont cultures, the
area has been used by modern tribal groups, including
the Southern Paiute and Navajo. John Wesley Powell's
expedition did initial mapping and scientific field
work in the area in 1872. Early Mormon pioneers left
many historic objects, including trails, inscriptions,
ghost towns such as the Old Paria townsite, rock
houses, and cowboy line camps, and built and traversed
the renowned Hole-in-the-Rock Trail as part of their
epic colonization efforts. Sixty miles of the Trail lie
within the monument, as does Dance Hall Rock, used by
intrepid Mormon pioneers and now a National Historic
Site.
Spanning five life zones from low-lying desert to
coniferous forest, with scarce and scattered water
sources, the monument is an outstanding biological
resource. Remoteness, limited travel corridors and low
visitation have all helped to preserve intact the
monument's important ecological values. The blending of
warm and cold desert floras, along with the high number
of endemic species, place this area in the heart of
perhaps the richest floristic region in the
Intermountain West. It contains an abundance of unique,
isolated communities such as hanging gardens, tinajas,
and rock crevice, canyon bottom, and dunal pocket
communities, which have provided refugia for many
ancient plant species for millennia. Geologic uplift
with minimal deformation and subsequent downcutting by
streams have exposed large expanses of a variety of
geologic strata, each with unique physical and chemical
characteristics. These strata are the parent material
for a spectacular array of unusual and diverse soils
that support many different vegetative communities and
numerous types of endemic plants and their pollinators.
This presents an extraordinary opportunity to study
plant speciation and community dynamics independent of
climatic variables. The monument contains an
extraordinary number of areas of relict vegetation,
many of which have existed since the Pleistocene, where
natural processes continue unaltered by man. These
include relict grasslands, of which No Mans Mesa is an
outstanding example, and pinon-juniper communities
containing trees up to 1,400 years old. As witnesses to
the past, these relict areas establish a baseline
against which to measure changes in community dynamics
and biogeochemical cycles in areas impacted by human
activity. Most of the ecological communities contained
in the monument have low resistance to, and slow
recovery from, disturbance. Fragile cryptobiotic
crusts, themselves of significant biological interest,
play a critical role throughout the monument,
stabilizing the highly erodible desert soils and
providing nutrients to plants. An abundance of packrat
middens provides insight into the vegetation and
climate of the past 25,000 years and furnishes context
for studies of evolution and climate change. The
wildlife of the monument is characterized by a
diversity of species. The monument varies greatly in
elevation and topography and is in a climatic zone
where northern and southern
[[Page 50225]]
habitat species intermingle. Mountain lion, bear, and
desert bighorn sheep roam the monument. Over 200
species of birds, including bald eagles and peregrine
falcons, are found within the area. Wildlife, including
neotropical birds, concentrate around the Paria and
Escalante Rivers and other riparian corridors within
the monument.
Section 2 of the Act of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225, 16
U.S.C. 431) authorizes the President, in his
discretion, to declare by public proclamation historic
landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and
other objects of historic or scientific interest that
are situated upon the lands owned or controlled by the
Government of the United States to be national
monuments, and to reserve as a part thereof parcels of
land, the limits of which in all cases shall be
confined to the smallest area compatible with the
proper care and management of the objects to be
protected.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, WILLIAM J. CLINTON, President of the
United States of America, by the authority vested in me
by section 2 of the Act of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225,
16 U.S.C. 431), do proclaim that there are hereby set
apart and reserved as the Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument, for the purpose of protecting the
objects identified above, all lands and interests in
lands owned or controlled by the United States within
the boundaries of the area described on the document
entitled ``Grand Staircase-Escalante National
Monument'' attached to and forming a part of this
proclamation. The Federal land and interests in land
reserved consist of approximately 1.7 million acres,
which is the smallest area compatible with the proper
care and management of the objects to be protected.
All Federal lands and interests in lands within the
boundaries of this monument are hereby appropriated and
withdrawn from entry, location, selection, sale,
leasing, or other disposition under the public land
laws, other than by exchange that furthers the
protective purposes of the monument. Lands and
interests in lands not owned by the United States shall
be reserved as a part of the monument upon acquisition
of title thereto by the United States.
The establishment of this monument is subject to valid
existing rights.
Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to
diminish the responsibility and authority of the State
of Utah for management of fish and wildlife, including
regulation of hunting and fishing, on Federal lands
within the monument.
Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to affect
existing permits or leases for, or levels of, livestock
grazing on Federal lands within the monument; existing
grazing uses shall continue to be governed by
applicable laws and regulations other than this
proclamation.
Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to revoke
any existing withdrawal, reservation, or appropriation;
however, the national monument shall be the dominant
reservation.
The Secretary of the Interior shall manage the monument
through the Bureau of Land Management, pursuant to
applicable legal authorities, to implement the purposes
of this proclamation. The Secretary of the Interior
shall prepare, within 3 years of this date, a
management plan for this monument, and shall promulgate
such regulations for its management as he deems
appropriate. This proclamation does not reserve water
as a matter of Federal law. I direct the Secretary to
address in the management plan the extent to which
water is necessary for the proper care and management
of the objects of this monument and the extent to which
further action may be necessary pursuant to Federal or
State law to assure the availability of water.
Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not
to appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any feature
of this monument and not to locate or settle upon any
of the lands thereof.
[[Page 50226]]
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this
eighteenth day of September, in the year of our Lord
nineteen hundred and ninety-six, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the two
hundred and twenty-first.
(Presidential Sig.)
[FR Doc. 96-24716
Filed 9-23-96; 12:27 pm]
Billing code 3195-01-P
[[Page 50227]]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TD24SE96.086
Billing code 3195-01-C
