t is time for educational use of the river corridor in Grand Canyon to be embraced by the river community and management personnel. When you read about groups that need to be included in the management plan revision, you consistently hear of educational use, youth, and special populations. The park has embraced the concept of evaluating and defining the spectrum of necessary and appropriate outfitted uses of the river This is one of the guiding principles of the Colorado River Management Plan (crmp, Soundings 9/97.) Hopefully all these groups will in some way be included in a revision that provides access to the river for a broader spectrum of outfitted uses. Brad Ilg wrote an excellent piece proposing an educational special use permit for the Perspectives issue of the bqr. Christa Sadler refers to educational use in her great response to the rather slanted article on the crmp that appeared in the 12/21/98 issue of High Country News. Educational use appears as an issue in the Summary of Public Comment from the 1997 CRMP Scoping Process. The guide¹s association commented in support of an educational allocation in their input to the park on crmp issues published in bqr Winter 1998. Kim Crumbo of the crmp team wrote in favor of educational use and broadening the spectrum in general in bqr Fall 1998. It is great to find support for the concept across a range of constituents and see others not affected by the outcome raise the issue. My guess is outfitters don¹t necessarily object to educational trips per se but outfitters feel they have so much at stake in the process they are currently pretty guarded about everything.

Now is a time for change in the management of the Colorado River. But change is going to take a long time at this rate. The park took the first steps in initiating the crmp revision in 1997. The tentative first steps of the Park in the process have been forestalled by the release of the Wilderness plan. The wilderness/motors question will rightly dominate the process until it is resolved. Other pressing issues for the future of river running in Grand Canyon will wait until then. Scoping was done over a year ago and the public input has been summarized and published. Workgroup areas have been identified and several have formed their membership and met. The river trip simulation project is moving forward and over three hundred trip reports have been entered into a sophisticated data base by Susan Cherry and the research crew at U of A. This project will provide data on how trips move through the canyon and test the affect of proposed changes.

The park has reorganized the team and is getting the process moving again. It is time to convene the working group on the spectrum of outfitted use. How could a program of educational use of the river be developed? The input of a number of constituencies as a guiding influence would be necessary. Will broadening the spectrum require a portion of the commercial allocation? Perhaps, but not necessarily. If it did it would probably be a very small portion. Educational use could also be implemented and controlled under the administrative use definition. This would create a new venue for resource and service projects if the nps needed. Any proposed educational trip could partner with the agency and identify one or more work projects that could be conducted during the trip. This could add a service learning component to a student¹s experience which can be quite powerful and it would provide a valuable return to the canyon.

How would institutions propose courses for the river corridor? As Laurie Domler, the new crmp team member for public involvement, mentioned at the spring Guides Training Seminar, we are still working on the ³whats² of the crmp and have not gotten to the ³how² stage yet. Better to agree on what the desired outcomes are for the crmp than to immediately get lost in the details. But Kim Crumbo¹s suggestion of a peer review advisory panel might be a good place to start. Should there be a bid and prospectus process for this new category of use as Kim suggests? That would certainly be the most open and competitive process but there would be a winner and probably a number of unhappy losers in this scenario. If it were to go the bid/prospectus-concessionaire route it would be important to have this new entity act as a service provider for eligible institutions or courses as recommended by some advisory body.

This proposal by no means diminishes any of the excellent work currently done by guides giving interpretive talks and educating clients on commercial trips. Guides are the true experts on the canyon and provide so much to the public. Every trip is truly an educational trip in a very real sense. Guides make a strong case for the value of of their work with the public and this needs to be acknowledged. An educational use concept could further build upon this excellent work. Guides might enjoy the possibility of concentrating on interpretation, hikes and resource issues on a trip with an educational focus. An educational river trip would be different because education and interpretation would be a focus of the trip and participants would be enrolled in some form of credit bearing program from an accredited institution.

Prescott College has a modest but colorful history of running educational river trips that dates back to the late sixties. Early trips were Earth Science courses were conducted by Dr. Vern Taylor. Prescott College Archaeology students under the supervision of Dr. Robert C. Euler assisted in research on human habitation in the canyon in the excavation of Stanton¹s Cave. In more recent times the College has used the river for adventure education courses training students in rafting skills and wilderness leadership. We have run a course titled ³Environmental Perspectives and Whitewater Rafting² perhaps a dozen times since call-in cancellations became a part of the non-commercial system in the early eighties. This course integrates environmental studies topics with whitewater skills training.

Educational use of the river was first acknowledged and formally accepted by the park service during the 1988­89 crmp revision. At this time we came forward and described our programs and our history with the desire that educational use not be left out of management structure entirely. The result of this input was that educational use was placed under the non-commercial definition (crmp, 1989). This has allowed our programs to gain access to the canyon by the hit or miss process of calling for cancellations. The college would be lucky to run one trip a year under the current system. This system requires any of our faculty that wish to teach in the canyon to forgo their own chances for a private trip. The dates we acquire from the waiting list provide our access to the river. Occasionally someone may offer us their permit and accompany us on the trip. As many would-be private trip permitees can attest, the competition for call-in dates has become fierce with the park now using an automated system to answer many calls on an hourly basis. It is now unrealistic to plan to get a date for any given time frame. For educational use to be a viable concept, any participating institution must be able to plan well in advance and have a specific date or small window of dates that corresponds to the institution¹s academic calendar.

At this point the specifics of how educational use is integrated in the crmp are not critical. It is important that the river community support the concept for future educational use in the canyon. I think it is a necessary and appropriate use that should earn a secure future in this review process. There comes a time in this contentious community of stakeholders when one has to assert one¹s own interests. I hope the concept of broadening the spectrum of outfitted use is an idea that people will continue to support when the going gets tough.

Steve Munsell