Obama signs bill adding to Utah's wilderness

President Barack Obama signed into law Monday a package of 170 public lands bills that created a quarter-million acres of new official wilderness areas in Utah, and proclaimed it as a key step by the current generation "to secure the nation's promise for the next."

Obama said, "It protects treasured places from the Appalachians of Virginia and West Virginia to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, from the canyons of Idaho to the sandstone cliffs of Utah."

The bill creates more than 2 million acres of wilderness areas in nine states, including 256,338 acres of wilderness in Utah's Washington County. It also enlarges Zion National Park to include some of them.

That was part of a major Utah bill included in the package to determine which areas of Washington County will be maintained as wild and pristine to help protect such endangered species as the desert tortoise, and which lands may be developed.

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, who wrote the Washington County bill with Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, stood behind Obama as he signed the bill in the White House.

"The Washington County Land Bill is the most important natural resource bill I have introduced in my Senate career and it was rewarding to witness the president sign it into law," Bennett said. "Today is evidence that groups with opposing interests can come together after years of debate to solve the wilderness problems in Southern Utah. It is my hope that this bill will be a blueprint for future public lands bills in the West."

Obama said, "This legislation is that rare end product of what happens when Americans of all parties and places come together in common purpose to consider something more than the politics of the moment."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the land bills package is "one of the most significant protections for our treasured landscapes in a generation."

The Washington County bill included in the overall packaged also designates 165.5 miles of the Virgin River as a wild and scenic river, sort of a wet wilderness area — the first such designation in Utah. That bans development and building along its banks, and damming of the river along that stretch.

The bill also creates two new national conservation areas to provide permanent protection for the endangered desert tortoise and other at-risk species near St. George, while allowing development in other areas where it had been blocked.

It also authorizes the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to sell excess BLM lands in the county that are not considered environmentally sensitive and to use the proceeds to buy other sensitive lands there. The new law also sets up a trail-management plan for off-road vehicles.

Several other Utah bills were also part of the package.