8 lawmakers, tribe oppose Utah wilds bill

A handful of powerful U.S. senators — including Democrats Richard Durbin of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York — and the chairman of the Shivwits Band of the Paiute Indian Tribe are the latest to oppose a bill that would designate wilderness and sell off about 25,000 acres of public land in Washington County.

The lawmakers and the band sent letters to key senators before a Senate subcommittee hearing last week asking them to block the bill.

Opponents fear the sponsor of the measure, Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, will try to attach the bill to other legislation in the upcoming final days of the Republican-controlled Congress — before Democrats take over both houses by a narrow margin next year.

In the letter to key Senate leaders, the senators said the bill would harm public lands adjacent to Zion National Park and in the Mojave Desert that have been recommended for wilderness designation under a rival bill, the America's Red Rock Wilderness Act.

"These public lands are an irreplaceable national asset," said the letter, signed by Durbin, Clinton and six others. The bill "falls well short of protecting this nationally recognized landscape by leaving out a vast majority of wilderness areas proposed by America's Red Rock Wilderness Act in that region of Utah."

Bennett and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, who sponsored a version of the bill in the House, say their bill would help balance conservation and rapid growth in the county. The measure would protect almost 220,000 acres as wilderness.

Critics say it would encourage development and threaten proposed wilderness in the region. The proposal would also threaten future wilderness by inviting new development in the rapidly growing county, the senators wrote.

Matheson's spokeswoman, Alyson Heyrend, said Friday that the letter from the senators "was not unexpected at all" because opposition to the bill, particularly from environmentalists, has been known since the bill became public.

"I think their main concern is that the Washington County land bill does not include all of the wilderness recommendations that are in the Red Rock Wilderness bill," Heyrend said.

Glenn Rogers of the Shivwits Band, located on the western side of Washington County, wrote to the Senate committee that the band was not adequately consulted about the bill and that, as a result, it contains provisions that would harm the community. That includes trespassing and unmanaged off-road vehicle use on the reservation that could harm plants and animals.

"We request your assistance to ensure that the act is not hastily passed in the final days of this Congress," Rogers wrote.

Bennett has not made his plans clear, and his spokeswoman could not be reached for comment Friday.

"It's kind of all up in the air at this point because, in truth, we've run out of time," Heyrend said. "And when they go back into session, Congressman Matheson doesn't really know whether the Republican majority will schedule a House floor vote, so that's why I think Sen. Bennett has felt like he has a little more of an opportunity" to move the legislation through Congress.