A crowd of protesters greeted Vice President Dick Cheney with the roar of chain saws and by singing cheery anthems about killing animals and destroying wilderness Wednesday morning.

The evolving throng of primarily environmental protesters crowded the sidewalk in front of the Grand America Hotel before Cheney's arrival at the hotel across the street and remained until his scheduled 12:30 p.m. speech. Throughout they chanted slogans and waved signs, calling for the vice president's "retirement" and urging protection of national forests and wilderness areas.

Initially, members of the Public Interest Research Group marched along Main Street, holding signs with slogans such as "Chain Up Cheney" and singing revised versions of songs such as "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," with the words "It's root, root, root for the industry / 'Cause if they don't win it's a shame." They also gave the vice president a "21 chain-saw salute" by revving seven chain saws — all bearing a "Home Depot rental" sticker — three times.

The group was angered by the repeal of a federal rule last week by the Bush administration that prohibited the construction of roads on about 55 million acres of national forest, PIRG spokeswoman Anna Swinson said. They were also protesting "other attacks" on forests, such as the Healthy Forest Initiative.

"It is clear that the Bush administration wants to see our national forests teeming with chain saws and bulldozers instead of wildlife and old-growth trees," she said.

None of the protesters created any significant problems as they urged cars to honk their support, nor did they ever get a chance to directly confront Cheney, who used a loading entrance of the hotel. In fact, the biggest inconvenience of the visit for people in the area may have been the approximately 15-minute closures of 500 South when Cheney's motorcade arrived and departed.

Also present at the protest were members of the Sierra Club and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, who were urging a "sensible energy policy" that protected important wilderness areas from development, said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for SUWA. She said that they were especially concerned about proposals to explore for natural gas and oil near Nine Mile Canyon, a major archaeological area in eastern Utah.

"It would be a heartbreaking loss to sacrifice those landscapes for short-term and often speculative oil exploration," she said.

Although the crowd was not what greeted U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft during his recent visit, McIntosh said it was quite impressive considering that Cheney's visit wasn't made official until Monday, and it was held during the middle of a weekday.

Not all of the protesters were environmentally focused, however. Volunteers with the Don't Amend Alliance circulated through the crowd, collecting signatures pledging their opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit gay marriage. There were also a handful of peace activists in the crowd, some of whom were also supporters of former Democratic presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

"We want Cheney to get the message that we want him out of office," LaRouche supporter Judy Twede said. "We want them to know that he needs to retire."

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E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com