BY GAIL BINKLY

Already under fire from environmentalists for not being restrictive enough, a proposal to create a "Canyon of the Ancients" National Conservation Area in Montezuma and Dolores counties was lambasted Thursday night by some local residents as too restrictive.

A crowd of approximately 140 turned out for the meeting of the Southwest Colorado Landowners Association, which featured considerable anti-government rhetoric and wisecracks about endangered species along with discussions of the pending proposal.

SB 2034, which was introduced by Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell and is being carried by Rep. Scott McInnis in the House, provides loopholes that would allow roads in the 164,000-acre area to be closed and residents to lose their traditional access for recreation, hunting and cattle-grazing, local landowner Mitzi Wallace warned.

She, Ute Mountain Ute tribal-council member Carl Knight, and others vowed to fight any change in status for the BLM-managed area.

The national-conservation-area legislation is being supported by the Montezuma County commissioners, state Rep. Mark Larson and state Sen. Jim Dyer as a more moderate alternative to the declaration of a national monument. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has said that, unless greater protection is provided for the region’s Anasazi ruins, he will have President Clinton unilaterally declare the site a national monument.

But Wallace said the legislation is no better than having a national monument.

" ‘Conservation’ means managed use," Wallace said. " ‘Protection,’ in national language, means being withdrawn from use. Every time you see the word ‘protection’ in this bill, you can substitute, ‘withdrawal from use.’ "

Wallace said the creation of a national conservation area would spell the end for owners of private land, or "inholdings," within the tract.

"Vehicular traffic will be ‘permitted only on roads and trails designated for vehicular use under the management plan,’ " Wallace read from the bill. "What that means is they’ll close the roads and then they take your property."

Although the bill specifies that private land within the conservation area could only be acquired "from a willing seller," and "through purchase, exchange or donation," Wallace said there are ways of making it so undesirable to have inholdings that owners are forced to become "willing sellers."

At the King Range National Conservation Area in northern California, Wallace said, owners of inholdings were so restricted by the provisions of the area’s management plan that they could not build homes and were forced to sell out.

She also criticized the bill for its vagueness in describing the creation of a 15-member advisory council to implement the management plan for the Canyon of the Ancients area.

" ‘The Council shall consist of 15 members, to be appointed by the Secretary (of the Interior),’ " she read. "When was the last time you talked to Babbitt on the phone? This council won’t be you and I. We won’t have ‘recognized backgrounds.’ "

She said the preferred alternative would be to leave the area under its current status as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern managed by the BLM.

"Who are they protecting this land from? Us?" she asked. "If they really want to protect the cultural sites, the Native American nation should have been consulted and they weren’t."

Knight agreed, arguing that Babbitt had shown a lack of respect for the tribes by not consulting them about the designation. The Utes are not considered direct descendants of the Anasazi, but own approximately 1,000 acres adjacent to the western edge of the proposed conservation area.

"If these people were going to designate something like that, why in the world wouldn’t they come to the Ute tribe and say, ‘This is what we want to do’?" he asked. "There was nothing said, from the higher-ups all the way down."

Knight said there was no need for a new designation for the region.

"The native people have been studied to death, and that’s what I know for a fact," he said. "The land as far as we can see should be left alone like it is. The remains that’s out there should be left alone like it is because, like I’m saying, it’s sacred land. But I’m saying now, the people doing these things don’t have a respect for what’s out here."

Knight said the Southern Utes have agreed to join the Ute Mountain Utes in opposing the new conservation area.

"So along with you and everybody else, the Ute Nation has joined the fight," he said. "The Great Spirit, the creator of all things, will make it possible, some way, somehow, so we can get through this bad nightmare."

Local resident Darrell Veach presented a 23-page petition to be presented to Congress once signatures are gathered. The petition describes residents’ objections to any special designation for the Canyon of the Ancients area. It also calls upon Congress to take a broad variety of actions, including removing the president’s power to declare national monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act and commencing "an immediate and complete investigation" into the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.

The meeting’s keynote speaker, Missouri radio broadcaster Derry Brownfield, did not address the conservation-area issue specifically, but said citizens are losing their private-property rights to the government.

"Today, for practical purposes in the United States of America, the king owns the land and we are the serfs," he said. "You don’t own anything any more.

"I got my car paid for — but you got to go to the courthouse and get a license. I got my farm paid for — but try farming it without paying taxes."

The Endangered Species Act is further ruining farmers’ and ranchers’ lives, he said.

"You can’t step on a bug," Brownfield complained. "If I thought for one minute I had an endangered species on my property, it wouldn’t be there 30 minutes after I found it."

These problems didn’t spring up with the Clinton Administration, he said, but are part of a long-term conspiracy.

"This thing has been going on for right at 100 years," he said. "It’s a plan to set up a one-world government."

Environmental measures such as the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act sound good but are deceptive and work to further the one-world government by driving people off their lands, he said.

"They’ve learned the bait-and-switch tactic," Brownfield said. "They said, ‘There aren’t going to be any more American eagles if we don’t pass this act,’ but they didn’t say a thing about stepping on some kind of a snake or a tortoise out in the desert."

He said Earth Day, April 22, falls on the birthday of notorious Soviet leader Vladmir Lenin. (However, Lenin’s birthday was actually May 4, 1870, according to a Cortez library spokesperson.)

Brownfield said it is unconstitutional for the federal government to own land such as national forests and that such lands should be turned over to the states. Saying these lands belong to the people is misleading, he said.