Governor pushes for conservation

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. wants Utah's government to do more to protect land and water.

In an address about conservation on Tuesday, Huntsman called for more funding for the LeRay McAllister Critical Lands Conservation Fund. That could come in the state's 2008 budget, he said.

The McAllister fund has been using state appropriations since 1999 for conservation purposes.

In his talk, Huntsman helped launch The Nature Conservancy's new project, the Living Lands & Waters Campaign. Aimed at saving family farms and ranches, watersheds and natural areas, the campaign is attempting to raise $43 million for conservation projects in Utah over the next four years.

So far, the project already has raised $24.9 million in public money and private donations.

Living Lands & Waters will help to protect some of the last great places in the state, Huntsman said during a luncheon speech in the Little America Hotel, 500 S. Main.

Huntsman noted that when President Theodore Roosevelt visited in Utah in 1903, staying in the governor's mansion, he praised the state "for being good stewards of the land."

Protecting water and land resources is "so important to our economic future," Huntsman said. Tourism is one of Utah's most important sources of income, and a sports convention adds $32 million.

Utah agriculture is a $1.2 billion industry, he said.

But the importance of the landscape goes deeper, he indicated. "These natural lands and waters are more than pretty places. From my perspective, they are bedrock" to the state's identity, Huntsman said.

"We need to preserve nature for people and all living things."

Heads of the state departments of Natural Resources, Agriculture and Food, and Environmental Quality accompanied him to the meeting. He asked the Cabinet members to help in the drive to protect land and water.

"All hands are needed on deck," Huntsman said.

"The Utah that we know and love and have come to take for granted from time to time is changing before our very eyes."

He called for work to save farmlands and open space "before it is too late."

He recited facts in a report released this week by the Oquirrh Institute. They show the state is the fifth fastest-growing in the country, that it is fifth in the country for number of species at risk of extinction, and that 58 percent of the historic wetlands in the Great Salt Lake watershed have been lost.

If current trends continue, the report said, 308 square miles, equivalent to the size of New York City, will be developed along the Wasatch Front by 2030.

The Living Lands & Water Campaign is the state's largest-ever conservation effort, according to The Nature Conservancy. It includes protecting resources in these areas:

• Bear River, where the Nature Conservancy announced the purchase of an easement on the 6,700-acre Selman Ranch near Logan.

• Grouse Creek Mountains of northwestern Utah.

• Great Salt Lake watershed.

• Colorado River corridor in the Moab vicinity and to the northeast.

• Southern plateaus in the southwestern part of the state

• Boulder watersheds near the town of Boulder, Garfield County.

• Mojave Desert, extreme southwestern Utah.

• Dugout Ranch and Canyonlands region southwest of Moab.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com

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