September 11, 2014 Wayne & Garfield County Insider

Page 1

THE

Wayne & Garfield County

INSIDER

Panguitch • Panguitch Lake • Hatch • Bryce • Tropic • Antimony • Henrieville • Cannonville • Escalante • Boulder • Fremont • Loa • Lyman Bicknell • Teasdale • Torrey • Grover • Fruita • Caineville • Hanksville

Grand Staircase Escalante Partners Welcomes New Executive Director

Celebrate the Dark Night Sky at Heritage Starfest CAPITOL REEF N.P. Capitol Reef National Park and the Entrada Institute are partnering in September for the annual Heritage Starfest. The weekend will be full of special events, guest speakers, stargazing, telescope viewing, storytelling and more. The dark skies of Wayne County and Capitol Reef are of the darkest in the nation allowing visitors from around the world to enjoy pristine skies full of stars, constellations, and the Milky Way. This event celebrates these precious resources and humanity’s connection to the night skies. Friday, September 19, 2014 - Capitol Reef National Park, UT • 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm. Daytime astronomy program at Ripple Rock Nature Center. • 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Evening program with guest speaker John Barantine, astronomer from the International Dark Skies Association at the campground am-

by Mariella Minton, Contributing Writer KANAB - Grand Staircase Escalante Partners, the non-profit ‘friends’ group that serves to support educational, outreach and service projects on the national monument, has a new executive director, with Noel Poe taking on the role earlier this summer. Poe has an extensive history working for the National Park Service, and GSEP has an eight-year history of working with the monument. Poe has served on the board of directors for GSEP in the past. In fact, he helped start the organization. "There was a lot of negativity surrounding the monument when it was first created," Poe said. So, he said, a group of people started meeting in houses throughout Kanab to figure out what they could do to support the monument. "It spread by word of mouth," said Poe, and before they knew it the group had created a non-profit. Poe served on the board of directors for five years before making the move to serve as its lead staff member. "I think I can make a bigger difference as a staff member than as a board member," he said. Friends of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument was officially created in 2006, but the name was changed in 2007 to Grand Staircase Escalante Partners. The non-profit organization raises money and volunteers for projects on the monument. "We're here to help the monument meet its goals," said Poe. The money raised by the Partners is used to fund projects in the group’s four focus areas: educational outreach,

Thursday, September 11, 2014 • Issue # 1065

phitheater. • 9:00 pm to 11:00 pm. Stargazing at the campground amphitheater with local and regional astronomers. Saturday, September 20, 2014 – Robbers Roost Bookstore, Torrey, UT • 7:30 pm-8:30 pm. Evening program with John Barantine, astronomer from the International Dark Skies Association. • 8:30 pm and beyond. Stargazing behind the bookstore. All events are free and open to the public. Learn about the Entrada Institute and the Heritage Starfest at www.entradainstitute. org and www.heritagestarfest. org. Visit www.ida.org to learn about the International Dark Sky Association at. More information about Capitol Reef National Park can be found at www.nps. gov/care. —Lori Rome, Capitol Reef National Park

Display Your Family's Military Memories

Insider

Public lands management veteran Noel Poe is the new executive director of Grand Staircase Escalante Partners (GSEP), a non-profit which supports educational and service projects on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. paleontology, archeology, and conservation. Each of the “four legs of the stool,” as Poe calls them, has a staff member who runs the program, and the rest is done by volunteers. GSEP raises money through donations and membership fees, but that vast majority of its funding comes from grants. Examples included funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the National Forest Foundation. The Walton Family Foundation has provided most of the funding for the Partners'

WHS Art and Music Programs Get Funding Boost from Local Raffle

largest project - the removal of Russian olive trees along the Escalante River and its tributaries. GSEP has helped clear Russian olive from 7,660 acres of public land. Every fall, nearly 70 young people from conservation corps across the southwest gather in Escalante to find out where they will be stationed for the season, making this restoration project the largest of its kind. "The Escalante River project is where we've really shined as an organization," said Poe. Poe remembers the Escalante River before it was New Partners Director Cont'd on page 2

ESCALANTE - Please start looking now. We will be doing Veteran Displays on November 11th, Veterans Day at the Escalante Community Center. We want to display and help preserve your military memories. If you have any Veteran/ Military items that you would like help preserving or restoring and need help, we would like to help you do that. Framing, scanning, copying, mounting, mending or whatever else it might need. Whether it is a button, a picture, a uniform, a story or a history, we want it. We are especially looking for items with an Escalante connection but the more we have the better the display. It can be from any time, any person, any where. It can also be an item from the country the service person served in, it makes the displays more interesting and real. No item is too small.

Call your families and see what they have. Look in those forgotten closets and trunks. Take back the items being used for costumes or that are in the attic. We are also looking for any articles that families or individuals may want to donate to a permanent collection for the Hole in the Rock Heritage Center. We know many of you have stored items for many years and don’t want them to be thrown out, now they can be preserved. We can help collect items to be labeled, copied, and preserved. Robert Proctor who is writing a historical index of veteran's from WWII will also be here to collect and record information about our Veteran's from Escalante. Call Leslie Venuti 435668-0540 How can we honor you if we do not know who you are? —Leslie Venuti

No Contest

Escalante's Billy Cox Wins Hot Dog Eating Contest to Benefit Garfield County EMTs, Hands Down

Picture: Bob Palin

Wayne High School principal Mary Bray accepts a check for $1800 from Diane Borgerding who organized a raffle for the Art and Music departments. Music teacher Taylor Malmrose and art teacher Sherry Ellett look on. Many thanks to all the people and businesses who donated the prizes and to all who bought tickets, and especially to Diane for organizing the event. Gallery 24 - Sunglow - Broken Spur - Rim Rock Saddlery - Royals - Brian Farms - Sheri Hair Designs Valerie Orlemann - Pat Priebe-Swanson - Bob Palin Paula Swain - Judy Hopkins - Dr Toni Thiriot Kami Taylor - Zack Hessler - Diane Borgerding Marsha Chappell - Troy Anderson - Amberlee Brill

REGIONAL Weather forecast for some but not all regions represented in our newspaper coverage area

Thurs. SEPT. 11 - wed. SEPT. 17 LOOKS LIKE INDIAN SUMMER...Sunny with a high in the upper 70s to low 80s Thursday, Friday and Saturday, changing to partly cloudy on Sunday/MondayTuesday and back to full sun again on Wednesday. Lows in the 50s. Maybe the tomatoes will ripen, after all.

Utah ranchers ask trust not to sell land for prairie dogs Nature Conservancy, feds hope to buy 800 acres from SITLA for endangered species. by Brian Maffly The Salt Lake Tribune WAYNE CO. - A proposal to expand a prairie dog sanctuary on state trust lands in Wayne County could ensure survival of the rodent and increase Utah’s permanent school fund by $1 million dollars, according to its proponents. But ranchers and Wayne County leaders want the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) board to reject the proposed sale of 800 acres to The Nature Conservancy, claiming it would increase federal influence in a county already saddled with public lands. And setting aside land for prairie dogs isn’t even necessary, said Lyman rancher Dave Christensen. Parker Mountain, the highlands where he runs cattle southwest of Loa, already is populated with prairie dogs that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) fails to count, Christensen said. He leases SITLA land on the same mountain as the proposed sanctuary expansion. “There’s not a better managed piece of land in the world for multiple use and wildlife. Why would you want to wreck that?” said Christensen, president of the Parker Mountain Grazers Association. “If The Nature Conservancy buys it, they’re going to set up rules and take away the liberties people have enjoyed out there. You’re going to see camping restrictions and hunting restrictions.” SITLA’s Parker Mountain block exceeds 100,000 acres that straddle the Wayne and Piute county line. Much of it is in the Awapa Plateau prairie dog recovery unit, one of three in southern Utah. Surveys have recorded between 500 and 600 adult dogs there nearly every year since the feds listed the species as endangered in 1973. But this year, the population spiked to more than 900, probably because of the mild winter, said FWS prairie dog biologist Nathan Brown. The Nature Conservancy would buy the 800 acres on the eastern edge of the SITLA lands and establish an endowment to manage them with a $1 million FWS grant and a modest state match, Brown said. Prairie Dogs Cont'd on page 2

ESCALANTE - Twelve contestants, including two brave women, vied for the hundred dollar prize and title of "most expandable stomach" during the Circle D Eatery's Labor Day weekend Chicago Hot Dog Eating Contest to benefit Garfield County Search and Rescue and EMTs. These Chicago Dogs, imported expressly for the event by restaurant owner and former Chicagoan Ken Ruick, were not your standard dogs, but rather, monsters that included all the fixins' plus pickle and tomato. During the contest, the majority of the contestants (clearly novices) looked more or less like they were eating a leisurely lunch, many stopping at two or three dogs and unable to continue. Escalante's Billy Cox was decidedly the most focused at the table, completely nailing seven dogs, buns, and everything that went with them in the allotted 12 minutes. At left, Billy gives the "thumbs up" after beating everyone in a remarkable show of gustatory form. Way to go, Billy! —Insider I believe in dirt and bone and flowers and fresh pasta and salsa cruda and red wine. I don’t believe in white wine; I insist on color.” ― Charles Bowden

ALL content for THE WAYNE &GARFIELD COUNTY INSIDER must be submitted on FRIDAY before 5:00 pm to be included in the following Thursday edition of the paper.

BOXHOLDER

PRE-SORT STANDARD PAID RICHFIELD, UTAH PERMIT No. 122


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.