SUWA takes Canyonlands ORV ban request to Washington

SALT LAKE CITY — The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance wants the Interior Department to ban off-road vehicles from 1,050 miles of trails in the greater Canyonlands area until there are further studies on ORV impacts there.

Opponents of the idea say restrictions will cause more strain on other public lands and do more harm than good, and that routes should be managed, not closed.

The area of interest includes 1.4 million acres under the control of the Bureau of Land Management, which the environmental group says has "failed to effectively protect the area from the impacts of ORV use."

The BLM developed its first large-scale trail maps in 2008, designating 20,000 miles of ORV routes in southern and eastern Utah. SUWA sued the BLM over the 2008 plans and now plans to petition the Interior Department directly.

In an approximately 200-page document SUWA plans to hand-carry to the Interior Department Wednesday, the group says "Greater Canyonlands is a landscape in dire distress" and that ORV use has "outstripped the BLM's ability to monitor and enforce this activity, and the destructive effects of ORV use continue to multiply."

The petition is filled with text, maps and photographs and is not the type that contains a list of signatures from individual supporters.

The BLM said it is unable to respond to SUWA's complaints or requests because the petition appears to mirror the complaints in the lawsuit, which is unresolved, said Mitch Snow, BLM's Utah spokesman.

SUWA Associate Director Heidi McIntosh said the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., in 2008, is still in the procedural stage where issues like venue are being considered. She describes the petition as a "completely different vehicle."

SUWA identifies "Greater Canyonlands" as the area including Canyonlands National Park, Natural Bridges National Monument and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Notable landmarks in the area it wants restricted include Butch Cassidy's Robbers Roost and Labyrinth Canyon, McIntosh said.

"Protecting the Greater Canyonlands would knit these 'crown jewels' together in a complementary system of land management, which protects the most threatened resources, permits native plants and wildlife to migrate freely in response to climate and environmental changes, ameliorates conflicts among ORV users and others, and facilitates a more comprehensive management approach based on watersheds and water conservation," the petition says.