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Protecting Utah's Redrock Country

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📢 Calling all dark sky enthusiasts! 🌌 On Tue

📢 Calling all dark sky enthusiasts! 🌌 On Tuesday, December 5 from 7-8 pm PST join "Slickrock and Dark Skies: Two Views of Utah Wilderness” from anywhere with an internet connection!

This presentation is co-sponsored by Oregonians For Wild Utah and Washington Friends of Wild Utah. Attendees will learn about the wonder and beauty of the Colorado Plateau day and night with a focus on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Presenters: Stephen Hinch (Author/Photographer) and Lisa Stoner (Utah State University/Colorado Plateau and Basin & Range Dark Sky Cooperatives).

Free, but please register in advance using the link in our bio.

Capitol Hill Update: Last week, Rep. John Curtis (

Capitol Hill Update: Last week, Rep. John Curtis (R-UT-3) introduced H.R.6396, the companion to S.3148, Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-UT) bill that would prohibit the BLM from implementing the recently finalized travel management plan for the Labyrinth Canyon area (pictured is Bowknot Bend and the Green River) near Moab, and has implications for future travel plans in Utah.

As we’ve said many times before: this much-needed travel plan for the Labyrinth Canyon region will guide land management decisions on a 300,000-acre landscape for years to come. It will help protect cultural sites, riparian habitat, and the experience of non-motorized recreationists while allowing for motorized recreation on more than 800 miles of dirt trails and routes. The BLM has taken an important step in balancing the recreational use of the landscape (both motorized and human-powered) and the conservation of ecological and cultural resources.

Rep. Curtis’s bill would buck the support of local businesses and local elected officials that support this plan. It also ignores the balanced approach to recreation and conservation taken by the Bureau of Land Management, the agency who prepared this plan. Representative Curtis’s bill makes it clear that he would rather see out-of-control motorized use prioritized over all other public land uses, regardless of the damage caused.

In short, H.R.6396, just like S.3148, is anti-conservation, pro-resource destruction, and dead-on-arrival. Read more about the travel management plan for the Labyrinth Canyon area using the link in our bio.

40th Anniversary #tbt Flashback! In early 2016, Ut

40th Anniversary #tbt Flashback! In early 2016, Utah Rep. Rob Bishop unveiled a draft of his truly awful Public Lands Initiative (PLI). Touted as a conservation measure, its real goal was to crush the burgeoning movement to establish a Bears Ears National Monument.

The PLI was one of the worst “wilderness” bills we’d seen in Utah since the Wilderness Act of 1964 was passed into law. It contained a laundry list of provisions that would roll back existing protections on over 100,000 acres of BLM wilderness study areas and 70,000 acres of natural areas (managed to protect wilderness values), transfer federal public land to the state of Utah, shift control of energy development permitting to the state, and permanently establish grazing and motorized use in sensitive areas. It also failed to protect as wilderness such iconic Utah landscapes as White Canyon, Hatch Point, and the Mussentuchit Badlands.

Over 600 Utahns packed a hearing organized by the Utah Wilderness Coalition, with speaker after speaker decrying the PLI as a disaster for Utah’s public lands. Mark Maryboy of Utah Diné Bikéyah described how the Utah delegation refused to seriously engage with Native Americans seeking protection for Bears Ears.

By summer, Reps. Bishop and Chaffetz had introduced the bill into Congress. At a House subcommittee hearing, the BLM, the U.S. Forest Service, and the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition all testified against the measure. Thankfully, though it passed the stacked House Resources Committee on a party line vote, it never received a vote on the House Floor.

“. . . [I]t’s clear that Representative Bishop’s PLI was not a serious effort to pass legislation, but an attempt to run out the clock and delay the protection of Bears Ears as a national monument by President Obama,” said SUWA Executive Director Scott Groene in a statement. “Now that Rep. Bishop has utterly failed to deliver on years of promises to safeguard this region from looting and industrial development, it is time for President Obama to step in where Congress has failed and protect Bears Ears as a national monument.”

We’ve come a long way together—thanks for being part of the Utah wilderness movement!

Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S

Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that they are reconsidering their 2021 decision to approve the right-of-way for a four-lane Northern Corridor Highway through Red Cliffs National Conservation Area (NCA) in southwestern Utah near Zion National Park. Red Cliffs NCA is home to imperiled species like the threatened Mojave desert tortoise.

Utah-based and national conservation organizations filed a lawsuit against the two agencies and the U.S. Interior Department in June of 2021 challenging their decision to approve the right-of-way. The lawsuit cited violations of the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act, the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act. The organizations and the federal agencies signed a settlement agreement last month.

In a statement, SUWA Wildlands Attorney Kya Marienfeld said, “Authorizing a major freeway through a Congressionally-designated conservation area should never have happened in the first place. Although it took some time, we’re pleased the agencies recognize this gem of public lands and are reconsidering this terrible precedent-setting highway for the benefit of all conservation-focused lands.”

See link in bio to read full release.

Happy Utah Philanthropy Day! 💝 Today is Utah's

Happy Utah Philanthropy Day! 💝 Today is Utah's flagship celebration of philanthropy and volunteerism, two values that we know resonate deeply with SUWA's members and supporters in Utah and across the country. If you're able, please consider a donation to a Utah-based organization such as the @ruralutahproject (RUP) Education Fund.

If you're not familiar, RUP is a 501(c)3 organization that seeks to empower underrepresented residents in rural Utah through training, education, voter registration, and issue advocacy. They reach out to rural Utahns and ignite a dialogue, empowering them to take action on important issues. Learn more and donate at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/rupef. Link also in bio.

📷 RUP photo

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425 East 100 South
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
(801) 486-3161

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Washington, DC 20001
(202) 546-2215

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Moab, UT 84532

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