From: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Subject: Information to keep you posted Date: 15 Jan 1997 15:16:36 -0600 (MDT) *************************************************** THIS IS A SUWA / UWC INFORMATION ALERT *************************************************** Folks-- The brief rundown on this issue: 1. The year ahead looks like we're going to spend our time defending our new national monument, as well as concentrating on passing our own wilderness bill 2. We have a looming accident in the form of something called RS2477, the old law that Utah counties are trying to use to allow them to plow roads into wilderness areas (and even National Parks!), thereby short-stopping their protection. 3. Maps of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, are now available on a first come first served basis. 4. St. George Get-togethers planned. 5. Activist Training Week in DC. 6. Talking to your new or newly re-elected Representatives. 7. A Primer on the legislative process. 8. Write a letter to your new (or newly re-elected) Representative. 9. Resolution in the Colorado Legislature. 10. Southern Utah plays Europe. *************************************************** 1. The governor of Utah, Mike Leavitt, and his staff are talking about Utah, the wilderness issue and the year ahead. What they are saying may be pretty important. According to several sources, Currently there are no plans to re-introduce the Utah delegation's awful wilderness bill. Further, and this is the interesting part, they will try and use a piece-meal approach to the wilderness issue. The idea would be to send 6-7 separate Utah bills to the hill, each of which would represent an area that the state and the UWC pretty much agree on. This may not work for several reasons. First, Rep. Jim Hansen (R-UT) isn't in the mood for this kind of repeated heavy lifting, after the great job you all did opposing his bad HR 1745 anti-wilderness bill last year. That combined with the fact that he has just gotten saddled with the chairmanship of the Ethics committee (which means Newt Gingrich is now Hansen's problem) means Hansen's head may be elsewhere. Second, while the idea of separate wilderness bills seems to have merit on the surface, there is substantial worry that a couple of "cream" wilderness areas may get protected followed by the less charismatic areas getting shafted. Who is to say that after we protect a couple of million acres the whole process breaks down with wilderness foes saying something like, "What do you want? We have already passed three wilderness bills." At any rate, if the Utah delegation does not bring a bill to the congress, this will allow us to concentrate on passing America's Red Rock Wilderness Act during the 105th Congress. 2. R.S. 2477 VOLUNTEERS STILL NEEDED!! Many thanks to all of you intrepid souls who have ventured forth with our Xeroxed maps in hand to photograph and document county claims of R.S. 2477 rights of way. The simple procedures and maps have proven to be user friendly. The photos and reports we've received for the completed adventures have been well done! Some Utah counties are claiming thousands of rights of way across the wild lands of our state. They have turned what should be a simple transportation issue into a complex land use issue. The rights of way are being claimed under the Civil War-era Revised Statute 2477, which in 1866 granted state and local governments rights to construct roads across public lands. That statute was repealed 20 years ago, but has been raised from the dead by wilderness opponents who are now claiming the right to bulldoze every cow path and survey line. Apart from our current Utah Congressional delegation, these claimed R.S. 2477 rights of way could be the single largest threat to protecting Utah wilderness. Your work is already paying off. There is evidence that at least three southern Utah counties have been engaged in unlawful road construction, not to provide for the transportation needs of their citizens as the old law originally intended, but to whittle away at areas that would otherwise be suitable for wilderness designation in hopes of rendering them unsuitable. By doing so, the counties are squandering their tax dollars on non-essential road work and risking the imposition of fines and reclamation costs that would be borne by their own taxpayers. Hopefully, the counties will limit their construction efforts to R.S. 2477 rights-of-way which are beyond dispute and essential to the needs of their citizens. Legally, the counties do not have valid rights-of-way under R.S. 2477 unless those rights-of-way existed as of October 21, 1976 when the old law was repealed. Road construction, in 1997, in locations where valid R.S. 2477 rights-of-way did not already exist will become nothing but 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 R.S. 2477 photographs available to the Department of the Interior, to help identify illegal damage to public property. Any county which tries to turn a marginal R.S. 2477 claim into a "road" at this late date will run a big risk that you, our R.S. 2477 volunteers, will have already documented its condition. Any county that gets caught doctoring even one R.S. 2477 claim after the fact will have discredited all of its claims. Evidence of very recent construction will make it difficult in many cases for counties to show that the road existed at all prior to October 21, 1976. We still have more claims of R.S. 2477 rights of way to check. We encourage you to volunteer again during 1997. Call us at the UWC (801) 486-2872 and leave a message, send E-mail to Gail at gshiker999@aol.com, or stop by the offices of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 1471 South 1100 East, Salt Lake City, UT any Wednesday evening between 7PM and 9PM. In order to serve you better we plan on being able to provide you with a claim of your very own on a walk in basis. We will be happy to mail assignments to folks who do not live in Northern Utah. Thanks to all of you the effort is already well underway, but there are still many more claims left to document. Your time and effort will be a tremendous help in protecting Utah's precious wild lands. 3. GS-E MAPS NOW AVAILABLE. The BLM has printed up about 4,000 copies of their map to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which are available on a first come, first served basis. The address for these wall-sized goodies is: BLM State Office, 324 South Main, SLC UT 84111. According to the liner notes on the map "a subsequent publication of this map scheduled for spring of 1997 will carry more specific visitor information, including recreational opportunities. For current information on visitor activities, facilities, and access, please contact: BLM Escalante Resource Area Office, P.O. Box 225, Escalante UT 84576. 801-826-4291 4. ST.GEORGE GET-TOGETHERS PLANNED. If you live in the southwest corner of Utah and would like to meet with other folks working to protect canyon country, please give Jennifer Lupton a call. She is SUWA's full-time legal eagle down there and is hosting some informal BBQs on the 23rd and 29th of this month. Her office number for more details is 801-634-8147. 5. ACTIVIST TRAINING WEEK. We're still looking for a few good folks to come to DC and put their passion for Canyon Country to use. If you are from HI, MD, MT or WV and would like to come to Washington to learn about meeting with congress about supporting Utah wilderness, and how to get others involved, please contact Tom Price at 202-546-2215, or by E-mail at tom@suwa.org 6. TALKING TO YOUR NEW OR NEWLY RE-ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES. Thanks to the dozens of you who have written asking for info packets to give to your newly elected Reps, so they can get up to speed on why saving Utah's canyon country is sooo important. We still have a few dozen more who need to be talked to, so please don't be shy about asking for info to give them.. We'll even walk you through what to say and do if you like. By the way, we have our 1st original cosponsor of America's Redrock Wilderness Act: Rep Chris Shays of Ct, a republican. Which reminds us that it's probably time for another civics review. 7. A PRIMER ON LEGISLATION. This is a brief outline of the legislative process, for those of you who may have been nodding off in civics class. The Reps sworn in last week are the members of the 105th Congress. Every two years every single member is up for re-election. What happened the year before (any bill introduced but not passed) is wiped off the slate and folks start all over. So for us that means that all of the members who were cosponsors of HR1500, America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, will need to sign up again this year. Most will be easy to get--they just need to be reminded. But our bill will need to be re-introduced and co-sponsors lined up anew. Talk to your Reps and make certain they re-up on our bill. Or ask your new Rep to become a co-sponsor for the first time. This is a tad confusing and in the end not important to our long term goals of saving the land we all love. Some say congress makes it all confusing so you the people will be intimidated and will therefore kept out of the process. On the other hand, if you bone up on the lingo, like "original cosponsors", it can get you in good with members of congress and their staffs, making you seem like an in the know player. 8. So, on this topic, ONE THING YOU CAN DO THIS WEEK if you have five minutes free. How about writing a letter (similar to the following) to your representative in congress. That and a 32-cent stamp will be a HUGE help in getting members of congress to become cosponsors of our wilderness bill. Feel free to change the wording to match your style. The important thing is that you actually write it, and how hard can that be after your heroic work last year? Dear Rep (you can get your Representative's name from the phone book in your area) Congratulations on your re-election (or election as the case may be). I would like to take a moment to talk to you about an issue of great importance to me. I am hoping you will join other Representatives who care about protecting our wilderness by becoming a cosponsor of America's Red Rock Wilderness Act to preserve the spectacular canyon country of Utah. As you may know, this year congress may have to decide the fate of millions of acres of public lands in Utah. The importance of this beautiful country was highlighted last year when President Clinton designated some of these areas as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. (You may want to insert a line or two here about why it matters to you, perhaps mentioning a vacation you had there or something similar.) On their own, the citizens of Utah surveyed the BLM land in their state, and have introduced legislation to protect 5.7 million acres of it forever by designating it as wilderness areas. This citizens proposal is supported by a majority of the people of Utah, and would ensure that all of these amazing lands, like nothing anywhere else on earth, would be protected for future generations to enjoy. (You may want to insert a line or two here about wanting to meet with them to discuss it further--ask Tom or Liz for help on this if you would like some backup.) Thank you for your consideration of this important issue. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Sincerely, Your Name 9. We just found out moments ago that a resolution will be introduced soon into the Colorado State Legislature condemning our new National Monument. We have heard this may occur in several western legislatures pushed by the so-called "wise use" movement. While this is pretty silly, we are interested in providing people and resources to help counter this nonsense. If you hear of these resolutions in your state and would like to help debunk them, please drop Tom or Cindy an e-mail message or give them a call. 10. THE ADS OVERSEAS. A bright reader passing through a NYC bookstore picked up a copy of a British pulp magazine, like GQ for example, and was amazed to see inside the cover a two-page spread advertisement by Marlboro of Garfield County, Utah, showing some of the rugged country found there. The ad was for participants in their Marlboro Adventure Racing Series. Apparently this is a HUGE deal in Europe, and millions of people apply each year to get to come to Utah and test themselves against the elements. We're curious about just how Utah is being marketed abroad, and what sort of impact message is being sent. If you have contacts in Europe who can fill us in, or have some of these mags yourself and wouldn't mind chopping them up for a higher cause, please forward them our way. That's all for now. Thanks for all you do... ********************************************************************** 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.suwa.org/ 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: Tom Price, (202) 546-2215, tom@suwa.org or Liz McCoy, (801) 486-2872, liz.mccoy@sierraclub.org You can also phone the Salt Lake City SUWA office at (801) 486-3161, suwa@xmission.com . ********************************************************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance Subject: Keeping up on Utah wilderness issues Date: 29 Jan 1997 17:35:22 -0600 (MDT) *************************************************** THIS IS A SUWA / UWC INFORMATION ALERT *************************************************** Folks-- 1. Changing of the guard at SUWA 2. Cosponsor Utah Wilds bills: a how to guide 3. Take a look at the new SUWA web page 4. Jim Hansen talks about Utah wilderness 5. Usage fees in the Fiery Furnace 6. Pop Quiz 7. Who's missing? *************************************************** 1. It was announced today that long-time Utah wilderness fighter and our friend Ken Rait will be leaving SUWA in March for new challenges in Oregon. Ken will leave Utah to become Conservation Director' for the Oregon Natural Resource Council. This is a big, important job and one in which Ken will be superb. But we gotta say, he will be a BIG loss for us. Ken as you probably know did more to stop that Kaiparowits mine than anyone else in the last six years. It was a moving thing to see his tears when the President declared the new monument and once and for all put an end to the nightmare of coal mining canyon country. Ken's wit is legendary, and sharp: for example he referred to the air force dropping a "smart bomb" on BLM land as "Beavis bombing Butthead." You can send him a note at ken@suwa.org to thank him for his 61/2 years of work. ** If your plans have you near Salt Lake in the next month or so, let us know and we'll keep you posted on the plans for a well-deserved roast of Ken by friend and foe alike. ** As we say so long to Ken, we welcome long-time SUWA staff member Scott Groene as the guy who will take Ken's place as issues coordinator. Scott will be superb in this position. He is tough, smart, outspoken and informed--a fine combination for one of the most difficult "green" positions in America. Welcome Scott, farewell Ken!!! 2. Cosponsor Utah bills; a how-to guide: Folks--It's time to really get cooking on lining up cosponsors for Utah Wilderness Bills. The scorecard last year was pretty good:116 cosponsors in the House, an all-time high number. Still, it takes 218 to pass a bill, and since this past election showed how neither party wants to be seen as being bad on the environment, now's a great time to ask. Harvey Halpern of Mass. has made it his goal to get every single member from his state to be an original cosponsor of the Utah wilderness bill when it is reintroduced. Here's how he (and you) can do it. 1) Call your Representative's office, either their local number, or here in DC (202-224-3121 will get you the US House of Representatives switchboard, then just ask for your Rep. by name). 2) Ask to speak with the person who handles environmental issues. Tell them you are a constituent and that you would like yout Rep. to be a cosponsor of the Utah Wilderness Bill sponsored by Rep. Hinchey of New York. 3) Tell them why you think it's important, and what it would mean to you. 4) Offer to either mail them, or have us here in DC, drop off more info. 5) Thank them, and then call us if they said yes. If you write a thank you note to the person you spoke with you get one *free* 5.7 Wild Utah sticker when you send us a copy (we want to keep our reputation for having the politest and most persistent activists). Often times that's all it takes. For tougher cases, let us know and we'll work out a plan with you to get them onboard. 3. If you haven't looked at the SUWA web page lately, take a few minutes to take a look. Kevin Walker and others have made this page into something pretty amazing--one of the best pages on the web. This page packs a terrific and beautiful punch to support Utah wilderness. Send the address along to friends and family. The SUWA web page has a new URL ( -- please change your bookmarks) and a new look. Notable changes include a photo tour of Utah, a Utah wilderness FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page, a timeline of recent events relevant to Utah wilderness, and an updated congressional database. The timeline and FAQ will be particularly useful to those of you who are new to the issue. Send any comments or suggestions about the web page to kevin@suwa.org. 4. Perhaps some of you have read or heard about the article in the Salt Lake Tribune last Sunday by Tom Wharton where Rep (R-UT) Jim Hansen talks about Utah wilderness. Summarizing and quoting from Wharton's article, among other things Hansen suggests he would sponsor legislation that immediately would designate 2.1 million acres of BLM wilderness in Utah. Hansen also suggests he would back the following: ** An additional 1.1 million acres currently being managed as wilderness study areas by the BLM would remain in that status indefinitely under Hansen's proposal. ** There would be no "release language'' inserted into the new bill prohibiting future consideration for lands not included in the 2.1 million-acre proposal. ** Hansen then would use Gov. Mike Leavitt's proposal to address potential wilderness outside the 2.1 million acres. Leavitt has suggested an incremental approach in seven areas of the state to see if all parties concerned with wilderness could agree on smaller scale bills for individual areas. Environmental leaders are encouraged, though skeptical about Hansen's proposals. "Jim painted himself into a corner in day-glow paint that there was only 2 million acres of wilderness out there,'' said Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance issues director Scott Groene. "It's a positive step that he's come to realize there is over 3 million. We'll talk to anybody about these ideas. If he wants to talk about the proposal, we'd be happy to do so." "If this is a serious proposal, it is surprising to the extent that the congressman would drop the hard release language and, presumably, some of the other provisions in past legislation that attacked the wilderness act directly.'' Fran Hunt, director of BLM programs for The Wilderness Society, said that Hansen's proposal could begin serious discussions on the issues, something impossible with the Utah bill proposed in the last session of Congress. "At least 5.7 million acres are deserving of wilderness status [in Utah],'' said Hunt. "We will continue to push for that. If the delegation introduced a bill with smaller acreage that was clean of other problems such as release language or damaging water rights language, we'd work through the congressional process. A reasonable congressional process that everyone could participate in is different than what we saw in the previous Congress.'' The word is that county commissioners in southern Utah counties are not very happy with Hansen's proposals. It will be interesting to see to what extent Mr. Hansen continues to support his proposals. SUWA and the UWC are certainly interested in discussing any serious Utah wilderness proposal. We will provide you with more information as we get it. 5. Usage fees in Fiery Furnace Just to keep you up to date on what the National Park Service is up to: Now at Arches NP if you want to go into the Fiery Furnace, in addition to having to fill out a form, watch a video, and take a test, you will need to pay an extra $2 to go in alone and $8 to take the guided tour. The money will be used to mitigate damage from overuse. Proof if more was needed that our public lands are being loved to death and that we need to protect the unspoiled wilderness while we still can. 6. POP QUIZ: What's your Congressional District? We've been gratified to see our list copied by friends and foes alike as an effective way to keep folks informed about Utah wilderness issues. But of course we'd like to still be the best. So, during the next month or so we'll be making some changes to our e-mail action alert list. These changes will make it possible to target alerts to people living in particular states or congressional districts. Various other fancy things will be possible as well. In order for you to receive targeted alerts, we will need to know what state and congressional district you live in, so we'll be sending out a questionnaire next week. 7. Are we missing anyone? Our e-mail action list is also unique because it's made up mostly of people who signed themselves on. That also means many folks may not be getting our list who would like to. We have several thousand "direct" subscribers (and thousands who it "echos" to). We hope to have 10,000 direct list members by the end of the year, but we'll need your help to reach this goal. If everyone finds just one other person for the list, we'll be well on our way to 10k. Here are two easy ways to sign your friends up: (1) Have them send email . The subject can be anything, and the body of the message should be empty. The address from which they sent the email will be automatically subscribed. (2) You can sign them up by sending email to with your friends' email addresses in the body of the message. (The subject can be anything.) Any address(es) found in the body will be subscribed to the alert list. The address from which you send this type of email message will not be subscribed. Be sure to double check the spelling of the email addresses if you use this method. That's it for now. Thanks for all you do... ********************************************************************** 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.suwa.org/ 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: Tom Price, (202) 546-2215, tom@suwa.org or Liz McCoy, (801) 486-2872, liz.mccoy@sierraclub.org You can also phone the Salt Lake City SUWA office at (801) 486-3161, suwa@xmission.com . **********************************************************************