Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument

Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument is a protected area by the type of National Monuments in the Northwest of the U.S. state of Arizona. It is located in Mohave County between the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and the Virgin River, near the border with Utah, in the south it intersects with the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and adjacent to the Grand Canyon National Park.

The over 4000 km ² protected area was established by President Bill Clinton in January 2000 and is under the joint management of the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management, both federal agencies under the auspices of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The name comes from the language of the Paiute Indians and is derived from Pawteh 'ee oasoasant what " tanned deerskin " means and suggesting that the country in earlier times was a prolific and large herds lived on the plateau.

Description

The reserve is located in the so-called Arizona Strip, the almost uninhabited and inaccessible northwestern part of Arizona, which is separated by the Colorado River from the rest of the state. Geologically it is in the cap rocks of the plateau Shivwits to sedimentary rocks of the Paleozoic with individual younger mountains from the Mesozoic era. The plateau is inclined from north to south, flowing rainfall have dug into the rock canyons, have exposed the older layers of the Precambrian. The National Monument includes only the uppermost of these geological formations, the actual Grand Canyon is located in the south adjoining the national park.

The highest points in the area are Mount Logan ( 2447 m) in the southeast and the belonging to the Virgin Mountains Mount Bangs ( 2,442 m ) in the north. The National Monument two large regions may overlap. In the West, semi-deserts and deserts of the Sonoran Desert, Mojave Desert and the Great Basin, the Colorado Plateau in the east. Therefore, in the west of the area grow typical desert plants such as cacti and yuccas ( including the Joshua tree lily, English "Joshua Tree" ), the higher parts of the East are partly covered by a forest, whose flagship species is ponderosa pine.

In the forests of the East, among others, the subspecies Strix occidentalis live lucida of the spotted owl, the transition regions serve as the area of the California condor was extinct in the 1980s, already in the wild and currently is the subject of the largest conservation breeding and reintroduction program of the United States. The only Auswilderungsort in Arizona is just a little west of the monument. In the desert regions of the California tortoise lives among others.

History

The area was sparsely populated due to the desert climate and the low fertility of the Native Americans. Individual buildings and petroglyphs of the Anasazi, as well as grinding stones and arrowheads be found scattered throughout the reserve.

An expedition of two Spanish Franciscan Padres, Francisco Antanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, came in 1776 by ​​the first white on the edge of today's conservation area, 1826 and 1827 drew the trapper and explorer Jedediah Smith the Virgin River at the northern boundary of the monument along. In the years that followed the route established as part of the Old Spanish Trail to California. End of the 19th century, some ranchers settled in the region and the forestry began with the use of forests, mainly as a support bar for the ore mines of the West. The logging ended in the 1960s, the existing prior to the protected status of use of public land by largely free-grazing cattle ranches private expressly guaranteed in the constitutional documents of the monument for the future.

Economically, the region is only moderately attractive, even tourism has so far on the north side of the Grand Canyon hardly takes. There are no facilities at the National Monument, and the small visitor center, which is responsible for several areas of the Bureau of Land Management, is out in St. George. All roads are unpaved sand and gravel roads, drinking water is found only in a few places.

Joshua Trees are found only in the southwest of the area

Native American Petroglyphs in Monument

Cattle in the National Monument

Even before the protected status of National Monuments in 1984 four sub-basins within the current boundaries (Mount Trumbull Wilderness, Mount Logan Wilderness, Grant Wash Cliffs Wilderness and Paiute Wilderness) have been designated as Wilderness Area and are still going on kept free of human influence. The Beaver Dam Mountains Wilderness is bordered to the north by the monument.

Because President Clinton, the area has reported without prior agreement with the State of Arizona, the reserve of the local politicians was initially criticized. It developed into a debate about the relationship between the federal government and the states in the West, where vast areas are public lands in federal ownership. As polls showed that over 75 % of the inhabitants of the region to the National Monument agreed, the protest went back.

Geological finds in the area indicate location sites of various mineral resources, particularly uranium deposits are suspected. A possible use of these raw materials would threaten the protective purpose of the area.