Bruce Babbitt has been fairly brave in visiting Montezuma County, in the face of vehement opposition to the proposed Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. For years, the rural West has nurtured a resentment, even hatred, of the federal government, and right now locals consider Babbitt the most visible symbol of the Clinton administration.

Consider, for just a moment, what the federal government has actually done to us. Suppress, temporarily, fears about what it might possibly do at some indefinite point in the future; what has it done yet?

Yes, it collects taxes, and it could manage that revenue better. But for our money, we get military protection, which we haven’t needed lately but which also provides jobs for hundreds of thousands of Americans. We get money for infrastructure, from federal highway dollars to block grants for water and sewer systems. We get funding for such huge projects as McPhee Reservoir and the canal system below it. We get a federal court system to protect our constitutional rights. We get congressional representation, which is what the American Revolution was about: taxation without representation.

Here in the Four Corners, we have an economy that depends on federal dollars. Without Mesa Verde National Park, tourism income would be nearly inconsequential. Without the San Juan National Forest, it would be even less, and our scenery might be at the mercy of the timber industry. Without federal grazing leases, ranching would be even more difficult.

And without all that federal land, every inch of Montezuma County would be locked up, owned by private individuals or corporations, some of them foreign. There’d be no cheap firewood for those who had the time and strength to cut it. There’d be no federally subsidized roads into the forest. There’d be no cheap recreation, because the best parcels would have been turned into private playgrounds for people who could afford to buy access.

If the federal government were to sell off its lands now, who do you think would buy them? Us? Ha. Investors from somewhere else, more likely; people like Ted Turner and corporations like ScottishPower. Right now we enjoy the benefits of access without the costs of ownership, because the entire American populace shares the role of absentee landlord. That’s not such a bad deal.

All sorts of dire predictions have been put forth about what might happen to the Canyons of the Ancients. There hasn’t been much talk about what would happen if Bill Clinton does what Babbitt has said he intends to do: allow traditional uses of the land while preserving cultural and ecological resources. Done well, that would be a good thing.

Yes, it can be argued that the federal government won’t do it well, but the truth is that the federal government is the only entity that can do it at all. Babbitt isn’t likely to guarantee grazing rights in perpetuity. We do have to plan for the day when our economy will change, when desert ranching is no longer feasible as a family occupation, and when CO2 production is no longer an important part of our economy. Blame the federal government, the economy, vegetarians, whomever.