Wilds impasse to end?

Republican Sen. Bob Bennett has agreed to draft legislation protecting some of Utah's sculptured canyons and soaring cliffs as wilderness, breaking a political stalemate to safeguard public lands around Zion National Park.

Bennett's involvement, confirmed Monday by The Associated Press, was solicited by Gov. Jon Huntsman's office and Washington County commissioners and signals a breakthrough in Utah, where no representative or senator has been willing to touch a comprehensive Utah wilderness bill for decades.

By tradition Congress defers to a state delegation in designating wilderness, but advocates have had to rely on an upstate New York congressman to carry a comprehensive Utah wilderness bill.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey's sponsorship of the failed Redrock Wilderness Act each year since 1993 is symbolic of the political stalemate in Utah dating to 1984 — the last year Utah allowed Congress to designate any wilderness. That year, the protection was given to the 460,000-acre High Uintas Wilderness, which contains the contiguous states' most expansive alpine highlands.

Now, with the encouragement of government officials and conservation groups, Bennett and U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, have agreed to draft legislation protecting a corner of Utah's redrock country.

Though still tentative, the wilderness proposal would protect high-elevation alpine meadows to the north of Zion and desert lowlands to the south, embracing a continuous ecosystem with permanent protection from logging, oil-and-gas drilling, mining, road-building and motor vehicles.

"We just want some resolution. We've been fighting about it for years and think it's time to get past the fighting," Washington County Commissioner Alan Gardner said Monday. "There's more to do than talk about wilderness. A lot of counties in Utah are watching us."

Washington County is home to the 229-square-mile Zion National Park and St. George, one of Utah's and the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas. Gardner said the wilderness proposal is part of a larger effort to identify areas of growth and future transportation corridors in Washington County, and follows an example set by Nevada's Clark and Lincoln counties.

Utah's leading conservation group, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, kicked off a two-day tour Monday of its proposal for a Zion-Mohave Wilderness area for staff members of Bennett and Matheson.

"It's one of the more serious discussions that have taken place in wilderness history," said Peter Downing, SUWA's Washington-based legislative director, who was reached Monday at the Los Angeles airport en route to St. George.