BLM Utah director Selma Sierra met with Denver-based Park Service regional director Mike Snyder last month to discuss deferring parcels. Those talks resulted in 24 parcels near Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument being pulled from the lease sale. Before Friday, at least 83,000 acres, many near the parks and monument, had been deferred from the upcoming sale, but that was not sufficient to satisfy critics of the sale.

On Dec. 4, six watchdog groups filed an administrative protest with the BLM, opposing the lease sale. The Colorado-based Outdoor Industry Association, along the Utah company Black Diamond Equipment, filed a separate protest with the BLM on the same day.

A local group of activists who call themselves Visual Cacophony took to the street Friday in Salt Lake City with a visual representation of their opposition to the lease sale. The group held a protest Friday in front of the BLM offices in downtown Salt Lake City and demonstrated its opposition by pouring a substance simulating crude oil on each other.

Group member Hasen Cone, of Salt Lake City, said it is working with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance on raising funds to cover the cost of a lawsuit seeking to reverse impacts of next Friday's sale. Toward that end, the two groups had organized a fundraiser for Friday night at the parking lot for Momentum Climbing Gym, 220 W. 106000 South in Sandy.

"There's still a chance to legally reverse it and still stop it," said Cone, 31, who was a river guide based in the Moab area for three summers.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com