BOARD02415

• Board Meeting Date: 3/20/2000
• Description: Directors' Reports
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

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close, and the West is becoming an urban place. And there is now, I think, a sense of urgency,
about - not just celebrating the visionary acts of a lot of great leaders in the first half of the e
century - but tuming to the future and saying "What is it that we want to see fifty and a hundred
years from now?"

Now I'm going to talk specifically about Colorado, because I do think there is a sense of urgency,
and to some degree there's been a sense of impasse on this landscape. I believe attitudes are
changing. I believe public demand that we address these issues is now palpably returning. And I
think that we have a tremendous opportunity.

But before I talk about Colorado and my adventure out toward Grand Junction, I want to talk just
a moment about Arizona. Because, among other things, I grew up in Arizona. I was... for a
magical nine years, the Governor of Arizona. It was the last golden age of governments in
Arizona (LAUGHTER). Someone surveying my successors since I left office said "The
progression is conclusive proof that Darwin was wrong." I don't mean that seriously, obviously.

But I thought about a year ago that I would turn to Arizona, where I have special connections and
a long history, to try to join this dialogue of "what should this landscape look like?" and "what is
our place on the landscape?" And I went back to Arizona and started at Grand Canyon - and said
to the people of Arizona "This is a national shrine... but there's something wrong here because
the Grand Canyon National Park is not co-extensiye with the ecosystem of the Grand Canyon."
Because, as inspired as Teddy Roosevelt and all of the others were, they saw the Grand Canyon
from a platform on the south rim. They had no concept of the grandeur, and the extent and the
glory of an ecosystem which runs 300 miles along the Colorado River which extends up the
tributaries into the volcanic highlands of the Arizona strip. And I said to the people of Arizona _
"We've got to pick up where these people left off, because there isn't a lot of time left. We need ..
to have a sort of vision of what kind of space we want in the long run." I did it, incidentally, in a
few other places in Arizona that nobody had ever heard of which I thought were pretty
interesting and where I've spent a lot of time.

We got a wonderful dialogue going. But then the Arizona Congressional delegation said that any
use by the President of the Antiquities Act would be a shocking abuse of executive authority.
"Stay out of here and we'll get it done by ourselves." Well, I kind of bought into that line in a
moment of weakness and said "Okay, I'll stay my hand."

About three months later the Arizona delegation introduced a bill called the "Grand Canyon
Protection Act" which expanded the boundaries and then reduced the existing protections under
the general land laws. They said, "We'll add a million acres to the Grand Canyon, but in this new
edition ofthe Grand Canyon we're going to encourage mining, we're going to remove the
existing restraints upon the division of private land, mining, all of these other extractive
activities." That's the point at which I went to President Clinton in December and said "You have
a little over a year to draw this dialogue in Arizona to a close. We've offered to engage the
Congress, and what we got in tum was a sharn piece oflegislation." That's the reason that
President Clinton went to the Grand Canyon in January.

It was an awesome day. He wanted to do it in the most remote part of Grand Canyon. You can't
get there from Arizona. You have to go to Utah - and even when you're in Utah you can't get to
most of it. So, they decided that we would helicopter in. On a marvelous January day we landed
in Marine One on this vast plain. There was nothing in sight. It doesn't look like anybody's been _
there since the end of the Triassic. And, I'm looking out as we land, and there's a Marine in dress ..