Folks who love the great outdoors owe a hearty "thank you" to the Utah Legislature.
No, not for any great environmental wisdom or compassion for wild critters or planning foresight to meet the needs of the millions who enjoy Utah's outdoor recreation opportunities every year.They should probably give thanks it was only a 45-day session. Heaven knows what kinds of mischief lawmakers would have wrought had they huddled together any longer than that.
In a mere 45 days, they made it legal to shoot tame elk in pens, they pumped $1.5 million into what some say is an anti-wilderness campaign, and they made it easier to kill pesky wild critters like bears.
In the meantime, they did precious little to fund bicycle trails, bolster the state's crumbling state park infrastructure or enhance wildlife habitat.
All that aside, Utah's environmental activists are not yet willing to give lawmakers a failing grade in 1999. That's because the Legislature finally, after years of neglecting the issue, got around to passing an initiative to manage rampant urban growth and preserve open space.
"The Quality Growth Act is a modest beginning that gives us hope," said Lawson LeGate, Utah field representative for the Sierra Club. "After years of doing nothing, it is a real positive step forward."
"A remarkably productive session," observed Rick Reese, a proponent of urban recreation and the Bonneville Shoreline Trail. "If this is where the Legislature is headed in future sessions, it is very promising."
But those pats on the back also came with kicks in the more-southerly regions. Activists are appalled that lawmakers would legalize hunting of tame elk. And they are angry they would spend taxpayer funds on an anti-wilderness campaign when polls show an overwhelming majority of Utahns support preservation of wild spaces.
"You have to give them a mixed grade," said Bill Christensen of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. "Some of what they did was great, and some was, well, not so good. Overall, I'd give them a C-plus or a B-minus (on environmental issues)."
So would most other environmental advocates queried by the Deseret News. Here's a breakdown of what the Legislature did and didn't do to help the environment:
OPEN SPACE (Grade: A-minus) -- Lawmakers created an open space preservation fund and dumped $5 million into it -- much of it money coming from "energy efficiency" savings at state departments.
Various open space preservation projects will now compete with each other for that money, although the exact process for qualifying for the state money is not clear.
That's the good news. The bad news is lawmakers did not pass a bill by Rep. Evan Olsen, R-Young Ward, that would have allowed local governments to impose a local-option quarter-cent sales tax for open space preservation.
After weeks of haggling that threatened passage of the entire Quality Growth Act, lawmakers also removed non-profit organizations from having a hands-on roll in the political mix.
Dave Livermore, executive director of the Utah Nature Conservancy, called it odd that no conservation interests are represented on the Quality Growth Commission. A person from real estate and development communities are represented on the commission by law, as are state representatives.
"It's ironic that the whole theme of the Legislature is less government, but without us there, it seems like more government."
But the fact the Legislature recognized the need to plan for growth is a monumental step forward, advocates agree.
"Some interesting new cracks are are letting a little bit of light fall on the interests of urban dwellers in this state," Reese said.
"My family has been in this valley five generations, and there is no conceivable way any of my ancestors right up to father's generation could ever have anticipated this famine of open space we are seeing now. All of a sudden, we have this phenomenal growth, and in many cases, it's too late to save open spaces."
WILDLIFE (Grade: D) -- Two years ago, Utah ranchers successfully lobbied the Legislature for the right to raise domestic elk. At that time, elk antlers were fetching high prices for their medicinal value, and they promised never to hunt the critters, which happen to be Utah's official state animal.
Since that time, the bottom fell out of the antler market, and elk ranchers were back before the Legislature wanting authority to sell canned elk hunts where rich eastern dudes would pay big bucks to bag a trophy elk.
Never mind the elk had been raised in a pen and would be released into a fenced area just before the "hunt."
Animal rights advocates rallied at the Legislature, promising to block such hunts even with their own lives. That's really what they said.
Gov. Mike Leavitt is being pressured to veto the bill, not only by animal rights advocates, but by hunting and conservation groups. "A really bad idea," Christensen said of the canned hunts.
Wildlife did not fair well on other fronts, either. Wildlife supporters had lobbied the Legislature for a $500,000 appropriation for habitat, but they didn't get it.
What they got instead was $200,000 appropriated to Utah State University to study "how rangeland may be managed to support both livestock and wildlife and to investigate the replacement of aspen by conifers."
Lawmakers did raise a number of fees for certain hunts, but they also made it easier for certain people to fish without a license. Those residing in the state hospital, a veterans' hospital, a veterans' nursing home, a mental hospital, those in homes for the mentally handicapped and children in state custody can now fish for free.
Lawmakers also made it easier to hunt cougar and bear.
RECREATION (Grade: B-plus) -- Lawmakers did several things that could help those participating in outdoor recreation.
Out-of-state owners of snowmobiles who avoid registering the machines in Utah will now be charged a $30 user fee. That money will go into a fund to pay for grooming of snowmobile trails, something that will help all snowmobilers.
Lawmakers also contributed $200,000 toward construction of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, a trail that follows the foothills from one end of the Wasatch Front to the other.
"It was a modest amount, but it was symbolically important because it was the first time the Legislature has acknowledged the importance of open space recreational opportunities in the foothills of the Wasatch Front," Reese said. "It was quite astonishing to us."
Lawmakers passed two different bills limiting the liability of local governments that sanction certain activities on government property. The bill will make it tougher for those engaged in skateboarding, rodeo activities, hiking, biking and horseback riding to sue local governments for their injuries.
That may seem like a bad thing if you are injured, but reducing the liability to local governments means those activities won't be eliminated altogether. Local governments say it could also mean more skateboard parks, biking trails and such because the risk of being sued is less.
"If the risk of liability is too great, cities will choose simply not to approve those activities," said David Spatafore of the Utah League of Cities and Towns. "You see that now with the bans on skateboarding and in-line skating on streets and sidewalks in certain cities."
Lawmakers did not do much for state parks. Funding stayed pretty much the same as what it has been, but they did not address much-needed repairs to many parks that have deteriorated in recent years.
However, they did give parks officials the authority to close or restrict access to park to protect watersheds, plants, wildlife and cultural resources. Maybe they can restrict access to deteriorating boat ramps, too.
WILDERNESS (Grade: D) -- Perhaps the most contentious environmental issue on Capitol Hill this year was the passage of two bills clearly targeted at wilderness. Lawmakers appropriated $450,000 to a satellite mapping project that will photo-document the presence of dirt roads and other man-made developments on public lands.
The presence of roads can be used to disqualify an area from consideration as official wilderness. Environmentalists say the satellite inventory is not needed because both the Utah Wilderness Coalition and the Bureau of Land Management have already conducted exhaustive surveys of what qualifies and what does not.
Leavitt supports the project as a way to amass an objective data base that cannot be disputed by either side when negotiations begin over what lands qualify as wilderness.
Lawmakers also passed a bill that appropriated about $1 million to a legal defense fund that could be used to challenge any wilderness designations that do not meet the legal requirements of the Wilderness Act.
"Those bills are certainly not in the spirit of bringing people together in meaningful dialogue," LeGate said. "What we should be doing, all of us, is getting together with the counties and talking about what their real transportation needs are. The key is for the governor to veto those appropriations, and let's start that dialogue."