FACTORS TO CONSIDER IN PLANNING THE FUTURE OF THE KAIBAB PLATEAU
Alternative 4 Rebuilding a Better Landscape
The three alternatives offer a band aid dressing change on a large festering wound. We propose a broader revisioning of the North Rim.
This alternative includes:
- The entire landscape from the Marble Canyon escarpment to Kanab Creek, the North Rim escarpment to Highway 89A
- The affiliated Tribes that are included in the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument are included as planning stakeholders.
- The Kaibab National Forest is included as a planning stakeholder.
- The Bureau of Land Management is included as a planning stakeholder.
- The Arizona Game and Fish is included as a planning stakeholder.
We recognize the historical actions of the past that are disconnected from the realities of the present including:
On November 28, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Game Preserve to safeguard native animals and natural resources on the Kaibab Plateau.
The North Rim Lodge was dedicated in 1928 at a time when the NPS was promoting tourism to the region.
11,030 people visited the North Rim during the 1925–1926 season, while roughly 40 times that amount visited in 2024.
The concept of a place to safeguard native animals and natural resources was replaced with a tourist hotel, cattle grazing, logging, and a failed attempt at Bison management.
The National Park Service lacks the funding to maintain a hotel, restaurant, visitor center, cabin lodging, employee housing, fire, backcountry, maintenance and law enforcement facilities.
Post Dragon Bravo fire, the Roaring Springs water supply may not be available over the long term.
We recognize the present, including climate change impacts on a mismanaged forest with the potential for catastrophic wildland fire and winter blizzards will increase in intensity in the near future.
The hotels in Page, Marble Canyon, Vermilion Cliffs, Cliffdwellers, Jacob Lake, Kaibab Lodge, Fredonia and Kanab have more than enough lodging to accommodate the 2024 North Rim visiting public.
Some facilities survived the DB fire. These facilities can be retained as the North Rim developed area is downsized to support existing overnight camping.
Bison management must recognize the benefits of Bison on the entire North Rim by expanding the existing herd’s range and no longer treats the herd as corralled beasts for shooting.
Overnight visitors will need to be totally self sufficient with regards to food and water.
Fire management must include controlled burns with the assumption that uncontrolled burns as the Dragon Bravo may transition into grassland.
The Kaibab Plateau, named after one of the Grand Canyon's Associated Tribes, has had a rugged 100 years. Just consider recent fires:
A century ago, shortly after the creation of Grand Canyon National Park and the nearby Kaibab Indian Reservation(for that band of the Southern Paiute), National Park Service Director Steven Mather, impressed by the magnificence of the forest that covered the Plateau, proposed that it be designated The President's Forest.
6500 cattle 5000 sheep 1-1/2 billion bd.ft.
Stepping to the side, in order to get moving out front:
Baaj and NKRD need to be involved, their land and purposes.
The Associated Tribes need to be involved (north side, yes, but also as an entity)
The cattle need to be factored in, and the Trust has to figure out what sort of environmental org it is going to be on this incredible landscape (the Kaibab +). Cattle? Or how to phase them out?
The bison are an incredible resource, apparently. Where is G&F?
So NPS/GC needs to focus on what is usable and to use that to maintain a minimal support focus and presence for visitors. The question of mass tourism and big new building should be off table until main questions are dealt with:
They are: integrating the Plateau: FS,NPS,Blm, G&F , and most important, include and integrate the Assoc Tribes, both immediate (Paiute, Navajo) and as advisory influence , decision making force.
Who are the others to be involved?
What is intellectual-environmental framework? Kaibab as an integrated entity. Kaibab as a damaged forest, and evolving landscape, one subject to big fires (they bad or good?) A landscape to be rejuvenated, recovered, restored, renewed/ in fact new decisions made for a changed place. So: What is vision of Kaibab Plateau 2150/2200/2300 ...?
Need integration of agencies, assoc tribes, interested non-govtal parties.
How about appeal to groups? To Assoc Tribes?
