SUWA is optimistic about new wilds bill

A bill to designate more than 9 million acres in Utah as wilderness should be introduced in Congress next month and should be more successful than previous efforts, according to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

For the first time in years, both houses of Congress are controlled by Democrats, and SUWA expects the bill should get more attention than in previous years.

"The issue of Utah wilderness is already on the radar screen of many in Congress," said SUWA conservation director Heidi McIntosh, who predicted the bill will get a committee hearing, unlike past proposals.

The comprehensive bill that covers BLM land throughout Utah will be sponsored by Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-New York, who has been introducing the Red Rock Wilderness Bill in Congress since 1999, according to SUWA.

"There will be one big bill, and it'll be introduced in the next three or four weeks," McIntosh said.

McIntosh said the whole package of wilderness proposals needs to be in the Red Rock bill but that some modifications could take place eventually.

"I think we're realistic," she said. "I think the full pie needs to be out there" so people can understand what the debate is about. But after that, she said, "Who knows what could evolve?"

Defending the fact that an Easterner is introducing the bill, McIntosh said, "I don't think anybody could deny" Utah has some of the most scenic lands in the country. Federal land belongs to all Americans, she said, and some of it in Utah is threatened.

Steve Bloch, SUWA staff attorney, said Utah BLM land is being targeted by the Bush administration for "aggressive oil and gas leasing." Utah has about 2.5 percent of the country's petroleum reserves, most of it in developed fields like those in the Uintah Basin and the Aneth oil fields in San Juan County. Areas near Desolation Canyon are under threat from energy developers, he said.

Speaking of economic returns from the oil and gas industry, he said, "We're not standing in the way of that." Over 7,000 drill permits were issued in the past six years, and SUWA has challenge only 74, he said.

David Garbett, a native Utahn who has completed law school in the East and is now a public lands fellow at SUWA, said that he began working on a wildlands inventory for the organization in 1997. Wilderness proposals were made as a result of volunteers working on the ground with cameras and maps, he said.

To say that the plans are being foisted on Utahns by residents of other states cuts himself and other Utah conservationists out of the picture, he said.

"I certainly feel that this wilderness proposal ... has been put together by looking at what is on the ground," he said.

McIntosh said people should "reduce the overly hot rhetoric" about environmental issues and work together.

The SUWA officials met with the Deseret Morning News editorial board Wednesday to respond to a house editorial criticizing Hinchey's sponsoring wilderness legislation aimed at Utah.

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com