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Welcome to Grand Staircase Escalante-National Monument (GSENM). Your exploration of one of the most beautiful places on Earth begins here.
In The Spotlight
Shelton Receives Conservation Award
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM)’s Carolyn Shelton was recently honored as the first recipient of the Conservation Lands Alliance’s Jeff Jarvis Conservation Leadership Award for her work promoting science, education and research on the Monument.
The Conservation Lands Alliance is a coalition of 80 conservation, historic preservation, faith-based, recreation, business, education and place-based friends groups supporting the Bureau of Land Management’s National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS), of which GSENM was the first national monument included in the system. Read More...
BLM Issues Final Decision for Organized Group Use Along Hole-in-the-Rock Road
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) signed the Programmatic Environmental Assessment (EA) for Organized Group Use along Hole-in-the-Rock (HITR) Road Decision Record (DR) and Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) April 5, 2012.
The BLM and National Park Service’s Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (GCNRA) began work on a Programmatic EA for Special Recreation Permits for organized use along HITR Road in Southern Utah in October 2010. GSENM and GCNRA foresaw a continuing desire for groups that exceed management prescriptions to travel along the road and visit its associated historic sites for the heritage, recreational, and educational values they provide. GSENM and the GCNRA jointly prepared this EA to analyze the effects of authorizing organized group activities that exceed existing group size limits along the road corridor.
The GSENM Management Plan (MMP) prescribes group size limits of 25 in the GSENM Passage Zone along the HITR Road. However, the MMP also allows BLM to authorize permits for groups larger than 25 people with appropriate NEPA analysis.
The HITR Road continues through the GCNRA Development Zone, and adjacent areas in the Recreation Area’s Natural Zone. GCNRA environmental analysis allowed for groups of up to 100 people in the Development Zone and 60 people in the Natural Zone.
This DR allows a maximum of 145 people at any one time to conduct both day use organized group activities at Dance Hall Rock and Hole-in-the-Rock Historic sites, as well as camping within the GSENM and GCNRA. The EA established criteria to be required of all permitted parties. The permitted group criteria includes: predetermined camp locations, sanitation facilities to be provided by the permit holder, a maximum of 29 vehicles per group, a length of stay of three days and two nights for large groups and 12 days for re-enactment/equestrian groups, and season of use and site restrictions will be applied to specific sites.
The Programmatic EA for Organized Group Use along Hole-in-the-Rock RoadandFONSIcan be downloaded from the BLM Utah Environmental Notification Bulletin Board website: https://www.blm.gov/ut/enbb/index.php.
GSENM Situation Assessment Report prepared by the National Riparian Service Team
NRST Report available here.
Washington Office NLCS Assessment Report
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