Anasazi Heritage Center Director LouAnn Jacobson has been named manager of the new Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, it was announced Sunday.

"Once I made up my mind to apply, they decided to transfer me directly into the job," said Jacobson on Tuesday.

"I am quite pleased. Canyons of the Ancients is one of the most significant areas of the country," she said. "The goal is to keep the monument very much a backcountry experience, while protecting its cultural resources from damage."

A noted archeologist with a 25-year career spanning the American Southwest, Jacobson will now begin hiring a staff of 13, with an estimated budget of nearly $700,000 to be used strictly for visitor services and resource protection.

She, along with a cadre of other specialists, will oversee natural- and cultural-resource studies at the newly designated BLM monument, known for its impressive remnants of human history.

The area’s recognition has increased over the years, prompting the new status that will lead to more interpretive signs at ruin sites and along trails and roads. A transportation plan now in the works will eventually identify, and then officially designate on maps, road and trail uses in a manner that reduces human impacts on the fragile ruins and the surrounding high-desert environment, Jacobson said.

"Use is continually increasing, especially in the East Rock Creek and Sand Canyon areas," she said. "And so figuring out how to mitigate the impacts of hiking, mountain-biking, and horseback-riding and all sorts of recreation on these cultural resources is important — a lot of that is education."

Despite the monument proclamation’s wording that "prohibits all motorized and mechanized vehicle use off-road," Jacobson assured that mountain-biking, horseback-riding and ATV use will continue on established roads and trails where currently allowed, but only to an extent that ensures preservation of natural and historical resources.

"Clearly Sand Canyon and East Rock Canyon are established trails at this point," she said.

Already published mountain-bike and horse trails such as the Hovenweep-Negro Canyon Loop and Cannonball Mesa spur will be analyzed for impacts, if any, under the new management plan.

The Cannonball Mesa trail, with its unique ruins at the end, needs to be looked at more closely, Jacobson said, because currently the trail crosses over private property without a BLM easement.

"It’s a problem because people are trespassing right now, and the owners are losing patience with the amount of trash accumulating out there, and with gates being left open, that sort of thing," Jacobson said.

Jacobson did not believe that the 17-mile Negro Canyon Loop that begins at Cutthroat Castle had any private-land issues.

Other priorities will be the hiring of a lead archeologist and law-enforcement officers. Collecting baseline data on monument territory, including the road and trail inventory, which is ongoing and in coordination with county planners and public-lands managers.

This spring and summer scientists will begin assessing the health of the monument’s natural environments, including in grazing areas and for weed control.

Jacobson emphasized that special care will be taken to ensure that landowners within or adjacent to the monument continue to have access to their private property. Ranchers with grandfathered grazing leases within the monument will also retain access to cattle herds.

"We want to reassure people that we are not taking access away from them," she said. "We need to identify how they are getting to that property and then maintain that."

Created last April by presidential proclamation, the monument was established to protect a 164,000-acre swath of desert canyonlands from over-use, artifact looting, vandalism and invasive development such as mining and off-road-vehicle use.

The vast area is known to contain the highest concentration of ancient Puebloan ruins and artifacts in the country.

Truly the first Native Americans, these Ancestral Puebloans, as they are known, established a widespread agrarian society rich in culture, art, religion and language with roots stemming from as far back as the Basketmaker Period around 1,500 B.C.

From 750 A.D. to 1,300 A.D. the Northern Puebloans, ancestors of many of today’s Southwest American Indians, built elaborate communities here before abandoning the region. They left behind cliff dwellings, villages, ceremonial kivas, artistic pottery, stone and bone tools, check dams, ag-fields, sacred springs, and ancient sweat lodges spread out across the landscape.

Jacobson said that as manager, her priority will be to better protect the more frequently visited of such sites as Lowry and Sand Canyon pueblos through increased preservation and education efforts.

But public participation in the creation of a new management plan will have to wait some.

"The funding we expect to receive is not directed for planning, so that puts the long-term management plan on hold," Jacobson said.

The formation of the local advisory council for the monument will also be delayed up to six months, Jacobson said, to allow time for President-elect Bush and his new administration to settle in.

"The (BLM) Washington office unfortunately informed us that it will be a very long time to form that council because everyone now has to be brought up to speed on issues," she said. "So that is frustrating, but we will just have to hold tight."

While President Clinton and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt have established a legacy of environmental conservation during their tenure, Bush and his Interior Secretary nominee, Gale Norton, support more development and fewer multiple-use restrictions on public lands.

Jacobson was cautiously optimistic regarding threats from anti-preservation lobbyists such as the Mountain State’s Legal Foundation. That group hopes to somehow overthrow Clinton’s recent wave of new monument designations, including those in Colorado.

"It seems unlikely. I think the new administration will have other priorities, but who knows?" she said. "I think in some circles support for the monument is growing while others continue to have concerns. It will be hard to deal with all of that until we get into the planning process where there will be opportunity for public input."

This spring expect to see new pamphlets highlighting Lowry Ruins, along with new monument signs. A monument brochure will be created to send out to those wanting more information, requests that are becoming more frequent, Jacobson said.

"There are places we need to target for interpretation, but it will be in places where people are already congregating and using," Jacobson. "Beyond that, the roads will stay pretty much where they are now, and the area will continue to be accessed for the most part through find-your-own-way backcountry hiking."