The Aquarius Wilderness

"The Aquarius Plateau should be described in blank verse and illustrated upon canvas. The explorer who sits upon the brink of its parapet looking off into the southern and eastern haze, who skirts its lava cap or clambers up and down its vast ravines, who builds his campfire by the borders of its snow-fed lakes or stretches himself beneath its giant pines and spruces, forgets that he is a geologist and feels himself a poet."

Slot Canyon, Sheets Draw - Fremont Gorge Proposed Wilderness

Thus wrote the celebrated golden-age geologist Clarence Dutton in his classic 1880 report, The Geology of the High Plateaus of Southern Utah. A century later, the high plateau country of southern Utah remains one of the few places in an industrialized first world nation where one can see out across an undeveloped landscape for a distance of two hundred miles, and know the spine-tingling thrill of total immersion in big wilderness.

Rising to elevations of 10,000 and 11,000 feet at the headwaters of the Escalante River canyon system, the lake-dotted Aquarius plateau floats incongruously, like a lost piece of Alaska, a vertical mile above the intricate maze of desert, slickrock, canyon, and badlands terrain surrounding it. It is the highest of southern Utah's high plateaus; the largest, and in every way the most magnificent.

In classical mythology, "Aquarius" was the water-bearer to the Olympian gods. The name is most fitting. In a wet winter, a snow pack up to ten feet deep may accumulate on the rolling table lands of the Aquarius. Through spring and into early summer the snow melts slowly, holding out in deep banks and drifts until June or early July, collecting as it melts into shallow, glacier-scoured lakes and ponds, spreading out across grassy meadows, percolating down into the thick layer of basalt bedrock that underlies the plateau, and finally bursting forth at the base of a tremendous, 600 to 800 foot high basalt cliff face that defines the southern edge of the high plateau country.

View from Boulder Top, Boulder Mountain Proposed Wilderness

To stand anywhere along the edge of this nearly continuous, 100 mile-long cliff wall, as an awestruck Clarence Dutton did in the 1870's, is an Olympian experience. From the tip of Bowns Point, the mountain's long southeastern arm, one can stare down like a god into the heart of the Escalante canyon country. On every side the Escalante river basin is walled by gargantuan land forms. To the west lie the 10,000 foot-high ramparts of Escalante Mountain and Table Cliff Plateau. To the south, the 2,000 foot-high wall called the Straight Cliffs runs eastward for fifty miles, pointing like a semaphore at the 10,000-foot Navajo Mountain. To the east, the strange purple domes of the Henry Mountains tower above the even stranger, thousand foot-high, hundred-mile long hogback known as Capitol Reef. And at the center of the vast amphitheater formed by these encircling cliff walls lies the thousand-mile maze of canyons carved by the Escalante River and its tributary streams.

All across the southwest-trending rim line of the Aquarius, headward stream erosion has carved huge amphitheaters into the lava cap that forms the base of the plateau. In places, lakes are perched at the brink of the great cliff precipice. Waterfalls stream down the cliff face at the head of each amphitheater, while talus slopes and small groves of aspen cling precariously to the walls, and far below at the base of the cliff countless artesian springs burst out from under the talus. The spring water collects into shallow streams, wanders across grassy meadows through networks of beaver ponds, then plunges down the sloping shoulders of the mountain through dense forests of Douglas fir, then aspen, then ponderosa, into the slickrock maze of the Escalante Canyons.

Impossible Peak, Impossible Peak - Oak Creek Proposed Wilderness

"Boulder Mountain", located immediately northwest of the town of Boulder, Utah, is the eastern extension of the Aquarius and the rooftop balcony of the high plateau country. Its 50,000-acre summit, known locally as "Boulder Top", is a level plateau 12 miles in diameter and 10,000 to 11,000 feet high, ringed on all sides by towering cliffs of basalt, a green and gold mosaic of spruce, fir, aspen and meadow, sprinkled with gigantic basalt boulders and dotted with over 800 lakes and ponds on Boulder Mountain alone -- 631 on the summit and another 203 on the sloping shoulders of the mountain. Each small lake and pond is a perfect jewel in a still more perfect setting. Many are hidden deep in the forest, inaccessible by any road or trail. The names of the lakes reflect their variety of shape and color, just as the lakes themselves hold up their mirrors to reflect the immense diversity of nature. There is a Purple Lake, a Blue lake, a Black Lake, and at least two Green Lakes, as well as Circle, Half-Moon, Horseshoe, Crater, Long, Round and Auger lakes.

Due to its mostly undisturbed character, sheer size, its forest cover, its elevation, its relative abundance of water and diversity of vegetation and habitat, the Aquarius country, together with its radiating network of streams, and the vast amount of undeveloped, roadless land surrounding it in every direction, serves as a crucially important sanctuary for plant and animal life, for the preservation of ecosystem integrity, biodiversity, and large-scale natural systems and processes.

The thirteen adjacent roadless areas encompassed within the proposed Aquarius wilderness (see table) comprise over a half-million acres of undeveloped or readily reclaimable land, only a small portion of which has been impacted by commercial select-cutting of timber and/or the scattered and marginal impacts of small-scale salvage of beetle-killed trees. Surrounding this huge block of undeveloped Forest Service land is a still much larger expanse of undeveloped federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service. Between the Aquarius headwaters, the Colorado River to the east, and Highway 89 to the south, contiguous Park Service and BLM-managed roadless areas encompassing the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Capital Reef National Park and western Glen Canyon National Recreation area, comprise a single mammoth natural area of over three million acres crossed by just three paved roads.

Such a large concentration of undeveloped public land is today, extremely rare anywhere in the industrialized "first" world, and its ecological value is enormous.

View from Impossible Peak, Impossible Peak - Oak Creek Proposed Wilderness

The proposed Aquarius wilderness harbors many -- probably almost all -- of the 183 species of forest-dwelling birds and mammals found on the Dixie Forest. Its alpine forests and meadows provide prime summer habitat for deer and elk; its lower slopes prove one of the largest concentrations of critical deer and elk winter range, and critical elk calving habitat, in all southern Utah. A long-term cougar study conducted here by Utah State University has identified the south slope of Boulder Mountain as prime cougar habitat. Black bear and bobcat roam throughout its dense forests and valleys; goshawk, wild turkey, and several species of owl zoom through old-growth conifer and mature aspen forest; peregrine falcon, golden and bald eagle soar along its massive cliff walls, migrating ducks, geese, heron, egret, shorebirds and other waterfowl flock to its countless lakes and ponds; beaver and exotic invertebrates thrive in its streams and intricate wetlands. Here, and perhaps here alone in southern Utah, it may still be possible to successfully reintroduce large, wide-ranging animal species, such as grizzly, wolf, Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, that were extirpated throughout much of the American Southwest.

Prairie dogs, nearly driven to extinction across the American West, today are thriving on the windswept table-lands of the Awapa plateau, at the northwestern border of the Aquarius. Rocky Mountain elk, virtually eliminated from most of Utah at the dawn of the twentieth century, were successfully reintroduced on Boulder Mountain in the late 1970's; that herd now numbers in the thousands. According to the 1985 Dixie Forest Plan, an "extremely successful" transplant of pronghorn on the Awapa Plateau is now the source for pronghorn transplant stock to other areas. California condors, recently reintroduced in Vermillion Cliffs to the south, are so far thriving in the wild, and occasionally soar as far as 100 miles north to comb the long southern wall of the Aquarius. Recent computer modeling by conservation biologists suggests that the core wildlands of the Aquarius could potentially support both wolf and grizzly bear, with potential wolf habitat connectivity links extending a hundred miles north and east, across the Fishlake Plateau and the San Rafael Swell to another large potential wolf core area centered over the Book Cliffs and Desolation Canyon, and on still further north to the High Uintas in the northeastern corner of Utah.

While reestablishment of wolf and grizzly may be controversial here in Utah, the mere fact that restoration of such powerful wild creatures is still possible in our state is inspiring, not only because of the ecological importance of top predators and highly interactive species to the entire ecosystem, but also because of its larger message: that the restoration of the natural splendor and diversity of the American west is still possible in our last remaining large "islands" of undeveloped public land -- if, and only if, we are willing to protect them from further human impact and fragmentation.

If we succeed in doing so, no one will benefit more than Utahns. In our ever-more crowded and polluted world, places like the Aquarius plateau are incredibly important to all humanity, and especially to those fortunate enough to live within a few hundred miles of them. The scenic, recreational and spiritual power of the Aquarius wilderness is second to nothing in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Hundreds of miles of historic Forest Service pack trails criss-cross the plateau's forests and wind down through the cliff walls into the canyonlands below, providing a wealth of hiking, backpacking, and horse-packing opportunities that rival those of any national park or wilderness area in America. Two trans-national hiking trails, the American Discovery Trail (which runs from San Francisco to Chesapeake Bay) and the Great Western Trail (which runs from Canada to Mexico), intersect on Bowns Point at the heart of the Boulder Mountain roadless area.

Fishing, hunting and birding opportunities are all world-class. The clarity of the air, expanse of views, the color and intricacy of the landscape are unsurpassed anywhere in the world. On a clear day one can see as far as Shiprock, New Mexico, nearly 200 miles distant.

Without protective status, a continuation of past forest management practices will inexorably carve this magnificent wilderness into small pieces and thoroughly destroy the beauty of the land and the integrity of the web of life that inhabits it. More timber sales, more mineral exploration and production; an ever-increasing network of logging and mining roads; existing trails widened into roads; existing dirt roads graveled and then paved; a relentless expansion of logging and mining; ever more dense concentrations of off-road vehicle routes; off-road recreational vehicle traffic across fragile alpine meadows, wetlands, and in stream-beds; resulting loss of soil and vegetation; penetration along all new road corridors of non-native, "invasive", species of plants, insects and animals; pollution of water, soil and air; reduction of forest cover, conversion of forests into drab, biologically barren and unproductive monocultural tree farms; damming of streams, grotesque over utilization by livestock; continued pulverization of stream beds and stream banks by cattle and off-road vehicles; loss of wetlands to water diversions; depletion of the water storage capacity of whole watersheds and aquifers due to soil loss, soil compaction, erosion and landslides.

Is this what Utahns, Americans, or the region's millions of foreign tourists want? We don't think so.

The Utah Forest Network's wilderness proposal for the Aquarius embodies a very different vision. Our proposal would protect nearly ALL existing roadless areas that still qualify for wilderness designation from new road building and other forms of development, and in addition, would reclaim some formerly logged areas, such as those in the ponderosa pine belt on the south and east slopes of Boulder and Escalante mountains. On Boulder Mountain alone, putting an immediate and permanent halt to taxpayer-financed "deficit" commercial timber sales (federal funding pays for the building of timber roads, mitigation of impacts and management of the forest; while logging companies remove the timber and scoop up the profits) would save a million dollars a year -- enough to pay local loggers to restore the forest rather than continuing to chop it down (Garrity, 1994, Garrity and Wheeler, 1998).

We firmly believe -- and as opinion polls amply demonstrate, most Utahns firmly agree -- the Mormon pioneer tradition of reverence for the land and loving respect for the beauty of our state and the integrity of all natural systems will enhance, rather than impair, both our economic prosperity and our quality of life, for many generations to come.

Threatened, Endangered and Sensitive species known to occur in the area:

Roadless Areas within the Aquarius Wilderness

References

Dutton, Clarence E., 1880, Report on the Geology of the High Plateaus of Utah, with atlas. U.S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office.

Garrity, Michael T., 1991 "Does More Logging Equal More Jobs? Examining National Forst Plan AssumptionsÓ Forest Watch, Portland, Oregon.

Garrity, Michael T. T, May 1994. Testimony before U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Natural Resources, May 1994.

Garrity, Michael T. and Ray Wheeler, 1998. Comments on Proposed Changes in the Forest Transporation System Management Policy and the Proposed Moritorium on New Road Construction in Forest Service Roadless Areas, The Colorado Plateau Institute.

Geary, Edward A., 1992, A Proper Edge of the Sky. University of Utah Press, 1992.

LeFevre, Lenora Hall and Nethella Griffin Woolsey (ed), 1973. The Boulder Country and its People, Art City Publishing, Springville, Utah.

Newell, Linda King, and Talbot, Vivian Linford,1998, A History of Garfield County. Utah State historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Roylance, Ward, Utah, A Guide to the State, revised edition, Salt Lake City, Utah Arts Council, 1982

Stegner, Wallace, Mormon Country, 1942. Duell, Sloan & Pearce, New York, NY.

Thompson, Almon Harris, 1939. Diary of Almon Harris Thompson, Utah Historical Quarterly 7, vols. 1, 2 & 3

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Dixie National Forest, 1986, Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Dixie National Forest land and Resource Management Plan, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Region, The Dixie National Forest : managing an alpine forest in an arid setting, 1987

Utah Wilderness Coalition, 1987. Wilderness at the Edge

Wheeler, Ray, 1998. A Modest Proposal to Preserve for Future Generations, Unaltered by Man, the Forsts, Lakes, Streams and Meadows of Boulder Mountain. Colorado Plateau Institute, Wolf Hole, Arizona.

Woolsey, Nethella Griffin, The Escalante Story: A History of the Town of Escalante, and Description of the surrounding Territory, Garfield County, Utah, 1875-1964 (Springville, Utah: Art City Publishing Company, 1964)