From: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Subject: Back in the saddle with information galore Date: 27 Nov 1996 10:15:57 +0000 (MST7MDT) *************************************************** THIS IS A SUWA / UWC INFORMATION ALERT *************************************************** Folks-- Well, a bunch of us have been out there working for candidates during the elections. This has been rewarding work, but we're back and ready to go to protect Utah's redrock wilderness. The 105th Congress will pose a real challenge. With your continued help, we believe we can make substantial gains toward our goal of protecting 5.7 million acres of Utah's most beautiful wilderness lands. We have a bunch to catch up on, so this is a rather long post. In this issue: 1. A National Monument management update 2. Information on the BLM inventory and lawsuit 3. Information on citizen wildland inventories 4. February wilderness protection kickoff campaign 5. What about cosponsorships--who's left to work on? 6. Here's a bit of information from Tom Price and Liz McCoy 1. Our New National Monument: What does it mean for wilderness protection, and how do I get there? There has been plenty of confusion surrounding President Clinton's surprise designation of 1.7 million acres of southern Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. One of the major issues of concern is what will this designation mean for the 1.3 million acres contained in the monument that are part of HR 1500 that we want designated as wilderness. First the easy part: there is no problem with Congress designating lands in a national monument as wilderness. President Carter and his congress did the same thing with Alaska back in the 70's. The big problem we are facing is how the monument as a whole will be managed. For example: now that it's there, some people in southern Utah want to fill it with roads, visitor centers, gift shops, multi-story hotels--you get the idea. From a wilderness quality point of view, there isn't much difference between a string of curio gift shops and a strip mine. A mess is a mess. The pressure to develop is already building. Tom has received e-mail from dozens of folks wanting directions, guidebooks, places to stay. He even received one from a Thor Valgundson of Iceland asking for a map of hiking trails. Managing the new monument in a way that is wilderness friendly is going to take hard work. We will be involved in planning and on-going management discussions and will send along more information as it is available. 2. As you know, thanks to pressure from folks like you the BLM took up Rep. Hansen on his ill-considered dare to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to re-survey the BLM lands in Utah for possible wilderness designation. The BLM last summer began the survey of all the BLM lands in Utah we think qualify as wilderness that they left out during their inadequate inventory during the 80's (for more information on that inventory, check our web page at www.xmission.com/~suwa). So, the BLM is now in the process of performing a better inventory--or were anyway. After completing 90% of the work, they have been shut down by a lawsuit filed by opponents of wilderness designation. In a decision handed down in mid November, Judge Dee Benson halted the inventory at least temporarily. This decision will almost certainly be overturned, and has raised questions about the impartiality of Judge Benson, who served for a time on the personal office staff of Utah wilderness foe, Sen Orrin Hatch. This entire process is quite interesting. The new inventory is certain to show that large tracts of land were categorically excluded from the original BLM wilderness inventory. This, of course, will favor our wilderness bill, HR 1500. Most likely the re-inventory will proceed next year. We will provide you with information on this issue as it becomes available. 3. Many of you know SUWA and the UWC are involved in two other inventory projects. The first has to do with road rights-of way. Counties in southern Utah have long claimed that roads exist in several of the sites proposed for wilderness protection under HR 1500. They state, therefore, that they own these roads (under statute RS 2477) and that these lands are not eligible for wilderness protection because they contain roads. But, many of you have helped inventory these claimed roads during the past three years. This work is important. Evidence exists that at least two southern Utah counties are presently engaged in road construction, in an effort to undercut our wilderness protection efforts. By doing so, the counties are taking a calculated risk of being subject to reclamation costs and fines, to be borne by their own taxpayers. We hope the counties will limit their construction efforts to rights-of-way beyond question or dispute, and which they have the right to maintain and repair. But legally, the counties do not have valid rights-of-way unless they existed as of October 21, 1976. Road construction in locations where valid rights-of-way did not already exist will become nothing more, and nothing less, than illegal trespass and vandalism against public property by county governments. Thanks to you, the counties will have a hard time getting away with it. The UWC will make your road inventory photographs available to the Department of the Interior, to help identify illegal damage to public property. Any county which tries to turn a marginal RS 2477 claim into a "road" at this late date will run a big risk that our volunteers will have already documented its previous condition. We still have more R.S. 2477 claims to check. Call us at the UWC (801) 486-2872 and leave a message or send e-mail to Gail at gshiker999@aol.com. Thanks to all of you the effort is already far along, and will be a genuine help in saving Utah's precious wild lands. The second UWC re-inventory project has to do with re-assessing boundaries of the wilderness lands proposed under our bill, HR 1500. The Utah Sierra Club and UWC are seeking volunteers for this task--especially to work in the San Rafael Swell and Book Cliffs. If you have some weekends free and would like to help, please phone Lawson LeGate at (801) 467-9294 or e-mail him at lawson.legate@sierraclub.org. 4. Redrock Week in Washington. To kick off the campaign to pass America's Redrock Wilderness Act in the upcoming 105th Congress, the Utah Wilderness Coalition will host a huge "Redrock Week" in Washington DC. Hundreds of citizen lobbyists (that's you, folks) will come to DC to walk the halls of congress rounding up cosponsors for the bill. For those who have been here, you know that there's nothing like some face-to-face time to get someone's attention about saving Utah's wilderness. We'll organize the usual workshops and presentations, along with some unusual tours and displays. Contact Tom and Liz if you are interested in participating. 5. Prospects for cosponsors for the Redrock Protection Bill: Of the 116 cosponsors of our bill, fully 103 were re-elected. More importantly, several critical opponents of Utah wilderness like Peter Blute of Massachusetts were beaten, in no small part due to environmental issues. So, we feel good about our campaign to obtain even more co-sponsors for our bill in this congress than in the last. We'll keep you posted on this. 6. A message from Tom and Liz: First of all, hello folks and we hope you had a great summer and fall. Both of us took a leave of absence and spent the summer working on political campaigns and are now getting back to work full time for canyon country. Kudos to Liz for helping re-elect our champion Rep. Maurice Hinchey of NY by his biggest margin ever. Now some updates: After a long years journey into the heart of American politics, Liz McCoy is finally heading home to Salt Lake City, where she'll continue her work for the Utah Wilderness Coalition. She'll be moving from the cramped SUWA flop house on capitol hill to her long abandoned house in Salt Lake. Can't say enough about what an enormous sacrifice she has made fighting off the Utah delegation's terrible wilderness bill and working to create our new national monument. Liz's move means some things are changing in the grassroots organization of the Utah wilderness work. If you live in Utah, New Mexico, Colorado or Arizona, Liz will be your new contact person. If you live in another state your wilderness contact will be Tom Price. Also worth noting (with great joy), Scott Groene will be rejoining the SUWA staff as issues director in SLC come January--after he gets in his 30 days of Wasatch powder for the year. Thanks again for all your wonderful and PRODUCTIVE work in past years. Here's to the future and to Utah's redrock wilderness lands. ********************************************************************** This wilderness alert is produced by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and the Utah Wilderness Coalition (UWC). We are dedicated to the preservation of Utah's redrock wilderness. You can learn more about SUWA from our web site at: http://www.xmission.com/~suwa/ Visit the Utah Wilderness web site at: http://www.byu.edu/~srushfor/wildweb/ If you want to join our list, send e-mail to: utah_wilderness-request@xmission.com with the word "subscribe" (and only that word) in the body of your e-mail message. If you have any questions or problems regarding the mailing list, please send a message to suwa@xmission.com. ********************************************************************** For immediate information on Utah wilderness issues, contact: Cindy Shogan, (202) 546-2215 or Lawson LeGate, (801) 467-9294, lawson.legate@sierraclub.org You can also phone the Salt Lake City SUWA office at (801) 486-3161, suwa@xmission.com . **********************************************************************