Utah's congressional delegation wants to steal southern Utah's natural heritage out from under our noses and hand it over to extractive industries. They stand a very good chance of doing so particularly with the framework they've constructed to develop their wilderness proposal.
Our congressional delegation has put the question of how much of our public lands to designate as part of America's National Wilderness Preservation System in the hands of county commissions in southern Utah. County commissions should certainly have a role in recommending which national interest lands should be or (more likely from their perspective) should not be designated by Congress. Their role should not be preeminent, however.People along the Wasatch Front - nearly 500 of whom showed up for an organizing meeting recently in Salt Lake City - and across the nation are essentially left out in the cold.
Many people with a sincere interest are unable to make the trek to Southern Utah on short notice during the middle of the week to make their views known. Those who can show up will face a contingent of people virulently hostile to the concept of wilderness and to the notion that outsiders should be telling them what they should do with "their" lands. After driving hundreds of miles, some have had their comments abruptly cut off - even when providing genuinely relevant information. With these barriers, the process is neither open nor fair.
One thing the process will not lack is a bias against wilderness. That much is abundantly clear from a communique issue by the Garfield County Commission: "We feel very strongly that lands, that do not fit the 1964 Wilderness Bill
sicT criteria should not be designated as wilderness, and we need your help in documenting proof as to why we are not including them . . .. There is a window of opportunity for Utah to resolve
the wilderness issueT and free up much of those designated
sicT areas . . .."
We see where they are heading. No doubt, wilderness has been a controversial issue in Utah. By giving little consideration to the interest and concerns of those along the Wasatch Front - and across the nation - in developing their proposal, the Utah delegation will not see the controversy subside, only heighten.
The Utah delegation clearly wants to dispose of the wilderness issue. But they shouldn't be so blatant, in this warped process they've set up, about wanting to dispose of the wilderness itself.
Mike Matz
Executive director
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance