The other hiking boot has fallen. Unless the president’s proclamation contains some surprises Bruce Babbitt has promised aren’t there, we now know what’s going to happen to the Anasazi ACEC west of town. It will be the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.

Some of the monument’s hard-line opponents will continue to bemoan the fact that their brinksmanship has failed. Their strategy was flawed. They didn’t have much to bargain with, and they didn’t have any room to maneuver. They announced boldly that they would fight every attempt to change the management status of the BLM lands, without adequately considering that such a fight would require more resources than all of Montezuma County had to offer.

But for most residents of southwestern Colorado, the latest news brings a sigh of relief, because we recognize that we’re going to come out of this in better shape than we might have. Babbitt has recommended that grazing and carbon-dioxide extraction continue, and that tribal rights be unaffected. While it’s clear that the monument will be managed to preserve the Ancestral Puebloan sites within its boundaries, it’s also clear that the designation will not include a recommendation to immediately cease those uses and allow access to the land only at one or two gated entrances.

That result can’t be credited to the benevolence of Bruce Babbitt. Local stakeholders and public officials worked long and hard to communicate to the federal government what they — with their working knowledge of those lands — believed were the most appropriate uses, and they backed their recommendations with convincing data.

That’s much better ammunition than empty threats.

In order to participate effectively in the political process, it’s essential to know the difference between what’s negotiable and what’s inevitable. There are indeed ways to influence the outcome of a proposal such as this one. It appears that Babbitt did understand that local expertise, both within government agencies and among the public, would be invaluable in actually accomplishing what he intended: to preserve Canyons of the Ancients as a long-term resource.

That’s why it was important to participate rather than just drawing a line in the sand and standing stubbornly on our side of it. We could have lost a great deal more than we did. The elimination of CO2 revenue from Montezuma County’s economy would have been a tremendous blow. Blanket edicts from Washington bureaucrats would have made life miserable here and wouldn’t have aided in the preservation effort.