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TopicsWilderness
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The
Drive for Protection (page 6 of 6)
An essay by Ray Wheeler
The Birth of a New Grand Plan
While defending the Plateau's remaining large natural areas from a barrage
of development threats, environmental groups have also been slowly building
support for the creation of major new wilderness areas on the Plateau.
While Arizona Strip and Utah
Forest Service wilderness bills passed in 1983 and 1984 protected modest
amounts of land on the Colorado Plateau, they categorically failed to
protect roadless lands that were threatened by development. This failure
led to an important change of leadership within the environmental movement.
By the mid-1990s, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a group devoted
specifically to the protection of BLM roadless areas on the Colorado Plateau,
had grown to become one of the most powerful, wealthy, and respected regional
environmental groups in the country. With a staff of over a dozen full-time
employees, offices in Salt Lake City, Moab, Cedar City, and Washington
D.C., and a powerful fundraising engine capable of generating over $1
million in revenue per year, SUWA carries so much political clout that
it has three times succeeded (in 1976, 1977, and 1998) in killing
Utah wilderness bills which it considered too modest.
As of this writing a top priority both for SUWA and for many of the major
national environmental groups is to build political support for a 9.1
million-acre Utah wilderness bill that would protect approximately 7.3
million acres of BLM roadless lands at the heart of the Colorado Plateau.
Over the decade since the bill was first introduced by Utah Congressman
Wayne Owens in 1989, the Utah Wilderness Coalition has amassed considerable
support. As of 1999 the bill has been endorsed by 173 national, regional,
and local environmental groups, and has 150 cosponsors in the House of
Representatives and 14 cosponsors in the U.S. Senate.
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