In time, Gold Butte will be appreciated

Tony Barron, Mesquite

Thursday, May 30, 2013 | 2 a.m.

So Sen. Harry Reid has introduced a bill to make Gold Butte a national conservation area, with thousands of acres of wilderness, no less? Well! Some critics are already saying that the whole idea is a fiendish and diabolical scheme and whoever came up with it must have been suckled by a sow and raised by an idiot!

Oops. I’m sorry, I got my notes shuffled. That’s what was said about designating the Grand Canyon as a national park. We all know how misguided that view was. But I predict that similar opposition, hopefully in a gentler tone, will be voiced against NCA status for Gold Butte.

As the late Arizona Rep. Mo Udall once observed, “I’ve been through legislation creating a dozen national parks, and there’s always the same pattern. When you first propose a park, and you visit the area and present the case to the local people, they threaten to hang you. You go back in five years, and they think it’s the greatest thing that ever happened.”

So it was for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, to cite a recent nearby example, and so it shall be for Gold Butte.

Wouldn’t it be nice for a change to just skip the opposition phase and just go straight to the realization that it would be a benefit to all us local users of Gold Butte and to businesses that would profit from the increased tourism that would bring?

Now it will never be the draw that a National Park or Monument would be, but I think that most of us are OK with that. I urge everyone to read the bill, let it assuage their fears and then get behind the effort to make Gold Butte a national conservation area.