Wilderness reversal sought

The Bush administration has filed papers with the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes of overturning a lower court decision that ruled against the state of Utah in a wilderness dispute.

The U.S. solicitor general recently filed a 10-page brief with the Supreme Court seeking to throw out a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last year that sided with Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance to force federal agencies to protect potential wilderness areas from motorized traffic.

Conservationists see this latest action as another attack against wilderness.

"If the court sides with the Bush administration, it gives them the green light to hand over our last wild places to big business for their destructive activities," said Mike Matz, executive director of the Campaign for America's Wilderness and former director of SUWA.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson has requested additional time, until June 18, to file its case before the Supreme Court.

The latest action comes on the heels of recent deals between Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton. In January, Interior agreed to set up a process for the state to claim ownership over rural roads that crisscross public lands. In April, Interior agreed to back off on interim wilderness protections covering 6 million acres of land in Utah.

The latest move has to do with a 4-year-old lawsuit that centers on whether the federal government should be held accountable for damage caused by off-road vehicles that has occurred in areas that qualify for wilderness protection. It dates back to 1999 when SUWA, along with other conservation groups, sued the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for not protecting fragile lands, specifically in nine areas particularly hard-hit by off-road vehicles.

The state of Utah, several counties and the ORV group Utah Shared Access Alliance (USA-ALL) were allowed to intervene as defendants.

In December 2000, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball dismissed conservationists' claims, ruling that as long as the BLM was taking some action it couldn't order federal land managers to ban ORVs from popular ares in "wilderness study areas" or WSAs. The court also ruled it couldn't compel the BLM to comply with provisions promulgated under the Federal Land Policy Management Act.

10th Circuit Court judges disagreed. And in doing so, the case was remanded back to U.S. District Court, leaving it up to Judge Paul Cassell to determine whether the areas should be closed to ORVs.

Cassell has yet to rule on the issue.