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Interview with Don Peay Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife

Ken Verdoia: Take me back in time. How did you ever become involved in this process of the Wilcox Ranch coming into public ownership?

Don Peay: Age 22, we wanted to go find some of the most remote places to hunt in the State of Utah and so we basically got maps and found places that were the furthest distance from a road and then we would backpack and hike into these places. And so for a long time we've just been around the edges of the Wilcox Ranch and been in the area, seen the tremendous wildlife, seen the tremendous potential, fell in love with the remoteness, seen the archeological artifacts. And so it was always kind of a special place and then over time as this ranch became known that Waldo was getting older and was lookin' for a buyer. So in about 1992, we're involved in helping wildlife resources get some big horn sheep from the State of Colorado and we actually helped release the big horns in a reintroduction back there. And the process was the sheep came from Colorado, came over in a horse trailer, and then we put them in a helicopter down in the town of Green River and flew those right onto the benches around Waldo's place. And so I actually was there when we turned the big horns loose ,and they run up into the shale cliffs. And so we were involved in the big horn reintroduction there.

In about 1997 it became known that Waldo was getting up in years, his family was in a situation where they figured they would sell. And so, actually a friend of mine had listed it and was trying to sell it to some wealthy individual. And we did take a few individuals out, and due to the remoteness it probably didn't quite fit their time constraints. My intent always was to try to get this in ownership of the public, so the public could enjoy this tremendous resource. And so through our sportsman's group, Sportsman for Fish and Wildlife, we'd become known amongst the political leaders in the state that we were a group that tried to raise a lot of private money to help facilitate private/public partnerships. I approached Jim Hansen, who's never got any credit in the press, but Jim's actually a very avid outdoorsman and very environmentally friendly. I went to Jim and I said, "Jim, here's a unique piece of ground. It's only about 4,000 acres, but it controls access and public land use of about 75,000 acres." And I said, "Could you get a couple million dollars from Congress, the Land and Water Conservation Funds?" And Jim says, "Don this is the exact thing that I want to see is, is to move some of these lands that control access to a lot of public land open to the public."

In a fairly short order of time, Jim Hansen got two million dollars appropriated. And it sat there in the bank, sort of speak. And then there were just some various players that came in, some individuals with the State Lands and Forestry that continued to pursue the negotiations with Waldo and they came to a final agreement. The hard part of putting all this land deal together is having the money in the bank to get it done when people want to do the deal. And so, after a lot of negotiation, the agreement was signed. I believe the ranch sold for 2.5 million dollars. Two million came from the United States Treasury, from Jim Hansen's efforts, and then a half a million come from the State of Utah. The wonder of this is now that it's open to the public, but yet, without some reasonable management, it could be destroyed and 'course there's a small percent of the society that doesn't value or respect things and there's possible looting and theft and desecration. So now the challenge is how do we manage this wonderfully unique piece of ground so that people can enjoy it, yet we don't ruin the remoteness and all of the cultural and wildlife and recreational opportunities.

Ken Verdoia: You alluded to this in your response, but I just wanted to focus in on this. Why get involved? Why was this important for you in your organization?

Don Peay: We respect private property, rights and the opportunity and the rights for people to have, control their property, but as hunters, a lot of us in the West are more and more frustrated that there's a lot more "no trespassing/keep out" signs. That's there right, and we respect that, but we've been a big advocate of public land ownership. Our group probably leans more Republican, and a lot of times a small part of the Republican Party's all, "we're all private land, public land's bad." To the contrary…you know, Teddy Roosevelt's our hero in the hunting community. Public land's one of our greatest treasures because we can all go in and enjoy it. And so, we just wanted to see. We've been involved in quite a few sales of ranches that have gone from private into public ownership and when that happens, the "no trespassing" signs come down and we as the general common folk get to go use them. So that's good.

Ken Verdoia: From the earliest consideration, your earliest efforts, this has always been about public access, wildlife habitat, creating an opportunity for wildlife to thrive in this area and the public be able to benefit from that access and opportunity. And yet, for the past year, the archaeological aspect of this has almost been the tail that's wagged the dog. How did that come to be?

Don Peay: Well, first of all, I think there's a media bias. The media has really never told the tremendous story that hunters and sportsman have paid in land conservation and wildlife conservation for whatever reason, the environment or environmentalists get that place. So that's one issue…they never paid much attention to what we do. Even though we've done more than probably any group in the country.

But the second part is there is an immediate need to kind of gain control and protection of these cultural resources. So, we kind of support in the short-term that the need to secure those and any wildlife habitat project takes 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. You know, we put the big horn sheep in there 10 years ago, the herd's finally up and growing. So, wildlife kind of has a long-term prospective, we'll still have our day in court, sort of speak, and the congressional intent language is very clear that wildlife habitat and public access, the hunting and fishing aspects, are clearly spelled out. So, let's get the place secured, but then, we're going to make sure we get good habitat management and good access for public recreation as well.

Ken Verdoia: The conversation I had with Jim Hansen was very brief. But as I started talking about trying to understand this he said, "You got to talk to Don, because without Don, this doesn't happen."

Don Peay: It's a nice compliment for our organization. Our organization is a fairly big organization as far as organized people that have direction and money to get stuff done. I'd just put it back to Jim Hansen. If you understand politics, it's hard to get to these people cause there's a thousand issues every day. Quite frankly, when Jim learned of this, he said, "Don, I can get this done in 10 minutes." And so where Jim was Chairman of the House Resource Committee, he can get stuff done. It's just, we'd built a relationship with Jim and he knew that if we said it was a good deal, it was a good deal. He didn't have time to fly out and research it. He said, "Don I trust you, it's a good deal. Here's the money, now go make it happen." So, I put it back to Jim. I put it back to Senator Bennett, Senator Hatch that also helped put it through and as a result now the American public and the people of Utah have a tremendous opportunity to enjoy something for many generations.

Ken Verdoia: When we were pitching this documentary project. We had to meet with the stakeholders group in Range Creek. There were 15 different interested entities and agencies, federal and state and local voices that were involved there. It seems to me that makes this a very complex system or parcel of land to manage with so many different interests. Is that good? Is that bad? Is it a challenge? Is it an opportunity? How do you see it, Don?

Don Peay: It's a challenge and it's an opportunity. You know, you hear a lot of things in the media that a lot of the western state politicians get frustrated with the public land process because it is contentious. It is a whole bunch of different views and opinions. Some of those people say let's turn it all over to the private sector. Well, what the private sector means is, no trespassing, no hiking, no hunting, no fishing, no camping. So, that's the alternative…the public land, even though it becomes arduous and complicated and time consuming. Still if we all, if the hikers and the photographers and the archeologists and the hunters and the backpackers, if we all work together, we can go to members of Congress and say, you know what, public land is good. And we want it. And when some of these ranches in the west come for sale, let's acquire them. Let's open it up to the public. Let's show confidence that we can have a public management. A public land process where everyone enjoys it.

Then of course the other thing is when land comes into public ownership where does the money come to manage it? And that's another thing that, you know, we have to find a revenue stream to pay for security, to pay for habitat improvement, to pay for all the costs associated with owning land.

Ken Verdoia: You were telling me of the extraordinary financial opportunity that exists for hunters that are willing to pay a premium for a very rare hunting opportunity. Give me an example of how that plays out in the Range Creek area.

Don Peay: Big horn sheep were extinct in the State of Utah. They were eliminated for various reasons. There was never any money to bring 'em back. And so, there was actually one small herd and a long time ago, about 13 years ago, we approached the governor, Governor Bangerter, and said look, let's sell just one of those permits and use that money to reintroduce big horns to cover the transplant costs. There's now about 5000 big horn sheep running around the State of Utah in 25 different locations. Last year an individual paid $70,000 for just one permit to hunt big horn sheep in Range Creek. And so that money then allows us to invest, to maintain the herd, to fix the habitat, to have a poaching patrol and also start new herds. So the hunting industry has found ways to generate huge amounts of money to help propagate the species and to help protect the resources.

Ken Verdoia: I have talked with some wildlife habitat specialists and they say, the first thing Range Creek needs is a good chaining and a reseeding to put in different feed sources to help build those herds back up and give them a natural and consistent food source. Can wildlife habitat and archaeology peacefully coexist?

Don Peay: Absolutely Ken. There's some places are going to be archaeological finds and we protect those and we don't chain 'em. Other places, there's nothing there, let's go chain 'em and make it for wildlife. So there and again if people will work together instead of saying, you know, "I own this, you have no say." If people will learn to coexist, some people might say, "I don't want to be around hunters." Well, we're not asking to hunt 365 days. But in a 2 or 3 week period in the fall, hunters should have some opportunity to go in there and maybe the archeologists don't come in during that period. Once again, here's a time for archaeology, here's a time for family camping, here's a time for hunting. And a lot of these activities can take place simultaneously as well.

Ken Verdoia: That's a best case scenario and it seems to me that if Range Creek can be successfully managed for true multiple use that it could set a standard in the American West.

Don Peay: Absolutely. And as I've said a lot of western states elected officials because of the frustrations of public land management and no funding et cetera. They're saying, let's not have any more. Let's make Range Creek a, a role model. Let's prove that we can have good multiple use. Let's prove we can raise revenue to pay for itself. And we want more not less. Because as, you know, the West is the fastest growing region in the United States. There's going to be more pressure for more public access to public places and private places. And frankly, we respect private land owners locking up their place, but our philosophy is when, when a private ranches come up for sale, the public ought to be able to pool our resources, acquire them and, and allow more public access, public hunting, public recreation and all the other things that come with some of the unique landscapes in the West.

Ken Verdoia: You've given me a marvelous best case scenario, but what happens if we screw it up? What's the worst case scenario that you see that could take this opportunity and turn it just into another same old, same old, here we go again.

Don Peay: Worst case scenario, the, the opportunities won't be maximized. The restoration of the habitat won't be maximized. The protection of the cultural resources won't be recognized or realized, but shame on us if we don't make it happen. I will say this, if a group of people want to say "The hunters can't take place in here. We want to make it a National Park." We'd be very offended. We were a key player in getting public access and then for that group to be forced off. We'd be very opposed and would probably litigate and whatever else. But another thing that is kind of looming out there on the horizon is there is some discussion amongst state government of maybe this ought to be traded to a state park and Wildlife Resources get some school trust land in exchange. So, you know, if people don't want to play nice, there's some forces out there that could cause an exchange or a trade or some other vehicle. We don't want to go there.

Ken Verdoia: The negotiated price and sale of the land left Waldo Wilcox holding the mineral rights to the Wilcox Ranch. Waldo Wilcox told us a couple of weeks ago, I intend to exercise those rights and I intend to squeeze every penny out of those rights to my financial benefit. Now there's a lot of oil and gas exploration that's taking place in Nine Mile Canyon and in adjoining areas. It raises the risk of industrialization in close proximity to these very special lands. Are you concerned about that?

Don Peay: Yes and no. The interesting thing, if you want to find where the moose are in Alaska in the winter? Go look under the Alaska Pipeline. Cause the pipeline's heated, it keeps the snow down. It keeps green grass. So, where everyone said it would be a devastation to wildlife. It's actually good. A lot of the best deer and elk habitat in the state is from reclaimed oil shell, mining, oil and gas. If we do things in the right way, our philosophy and experience is you can have it all. You could have some limited oil and gas exploration as long as we mitigate. And actually, you know, if you have a well that's producing 3 million dollars, part of that royalty could go to help fund the protection of the cultural resources, wildlife habitat restoration, et cetera. So once again, we have a pretty strong experience and track record of working with everyone. People that love wild places, wilderness, oil and gas, coal mining, wildlife habitat photography, archeology, hunting, fishing, camping. And frankly, if we'd all work together better, we could get a lot more public land acquired and that means just more for all of us.