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Supporters and wilderness advocates like you play a critical role in the protection of Utah’s spectacular wild places.
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December 1st, 2021
Great news! The Navajo Nation Council has passed a resolution in support of America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, a first-of-its-kind endorsement that acknowledges the role protecting public lands can play in combating climate change.
“Protecting our land is important to the Navajo people and we support this wilderness designation in America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act,” said Speaker Seth Damon (Bááhaalí, Chichiltah, Manuelito, Red Rock, Rock Springs, Tséyatoh). “President Biden outlined a robust policy change across the federal government to address climate change. It is imperative that the Navajo Nation work on a global level to address this growing problem that affects our oceans, air, and water.”
Sponsored by Senator Dick Durbin and Representative Alan Lowenthal, America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act would designate more than 8 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land as wilderness, the highest form of protection for federal lands. The bill would protect iconic Utah landscapes such as Cedar Mesa, Factory Butte, the Kaiparowits Plateau, and the Greater Canyonlands area.
As the ancestral home of many Tribes, the region contains abundant and significant cultural resources. Protecting these wild landscapes would also keep a significant amount of fossil fuels in the ground, accounting for 5.7 percent of the carbon mitigation needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Our support for this Congressional bill sends a message that the Navajo Nation is concerned about climate change and the impact on our environment,” said Delegate Herman Daniels, Jr. “Since time immemorial, we have lived in the canyons, mountains, and on the mesas currently managed by the federal government that would be protected and preserved by this Congressional bill. For generations, our Indigenous people across the United States have been the original caretakers of our sacred lands and it will remain so.”
Please ask your members of Congress to support America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act today. And if any of your representatives are already cosponsors, please click here to thank them.
SUWA is committed to working with Tribes to help protect the redrock permanently. We are grateful to the Navajo Nation for their efforts to support America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act.
Add your voice by asking your members of Congress to cosponsor today!
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November 29th, 2021Read More »
Our e-newsletter with the latest on redrock wilderness news and events.
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November 29th, 2021
It’s been a month and a half since President Biden’s Rose Garden ceremony where he fully restored Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments and righted one of the most grievous wrongs from the last administration. Surrounded by Native American Tribal leaders, the first Native American Secretary of the Interior, congressional and conservation stalwarts, and members of his executive team, Biden declared that protecting these monuments and their cultural sites and objects “may be the easiest thing I’ve ever done so far as President.” We couldn’t agree more!
But Utah Governor Spencer Cox and Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes felt differently. Where we see strong leadership and the vision to protect Bears Ears – a landscape Native American Tribes have called home since time immemorial – Cox and Reyes complain of an affront to rural Utahns. And where we see desperately needed action to conserve Grand Staircase-Escalante and mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis, Cox and Reyes wring their hands that this will mean less coal, oil, and gas is mined and burned at the expense of future generations.
And now Cox and Reyes are willing to put someone else’s money (Utah taxpayers’) where their mouths are.
A few weeks ago, the state of Utah announced that it was soliciting bids from law firms and lawyers to pursue a lawsuit against President Biden’s restoration of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments. And while the announcement doesn’t exactly come out and say this, it’s clear the contract would last for years and may easily exceed $10 million dollars in fees and expenses. And why not? When it’s someone else’s money, the sky’s the limit, right?
Not so fast . . . Please help us convince Governor Cox and Attorney General Reyes this is a terrible idea that will only backfire. If you live in Utah, send them a message now via our online alert system. And if you live in or near Salt Lake City, join us for a protest at 6pm this Thursday (12/2) at the Utah State Capitol.
Rather than waste millions of taxpayer dollars on this fool’s errand (a very similar lawsuit challenging President Clinton’s establishment of Grand Staircase-Escalante was defeated by SUWA and others in 2004), Utah politicians should embrace the protection of these remarkable landscapes and recognize what huge assets they are to the state of Utah and our nation as a whole. Rather than pay private lawyers to travel first class and wine and dine at the taxpayers’ expense, those dollars should go to support stewardship, visitor education, and helping local communities benefit from the monuments.
The choice is clear: Governor Cox and Attorney General Reyes should beat their swords into ploughshares and stand with the majority of Utahns and Americans who support protecting Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments.
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November 22nd, 2021
Not long ago we told you about the Biden administration’s plan to auction off more than 6,600 acres of public land in Utah for oil and gas development. You may have even submitted comments in September, during the scoping phase of the public process. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has now released its environmental assessment for this lease sale and is accepting public comments through December 1st. Once again, we need you to raise your voice.
Please tell the BLM to protect our climate by keeping fossil fuel development off our public lands.
Development on these parcels would threaten wildlife, water resources, and recreation while exacerbating the climate crisis. Four of the six parcels are located adjacent to the Green River in the Uinta Basin, while another is located adjacent to the San Rafael Reef Wilderness, just north of the entrance to Goblin Valley State Park.
Aerial View of San Rafael Reef Wilderness. © Tom Till
The BLM is not required to sell these—or any parcels—for development. In January, President Biden issued an executive order pausing all new oil and gas leasing on public lands to allow the Interior Department to review its broken leasing program. And while a federal court in Louisiana set aside that order and instructed the Interior Department to restart a leasing process, the BLM retains broad legal discretion not to lease these lands in order to protect public health and the environment, including our climate.
Tell the BLM to exercise its discretion and defer its sale of these Utah lease parcels.
The Interior Department has recognized that the current oil and gas program is broken because, among other things, it “fail[s] to adequately incorporate consideration of climate impacts into leasing decisions” and “inadequately account[s] for environmental harms to lands, waters, and other resources.” The BLM should not offer any new parcels until these shortcomings are resolved, and the Biden administration should stand by its promise to curb fossil fuel leasing and development on our public lands.
The BLM is accepting comments on its environmental assessment through December 1st. Please submit your comments today.
Thank you!
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November 18th, 2021
Over the past half-decade, our nearly 1,000 stewardship volunteers have dedicated over 11,500 hours of direct service on Utah’s public lands. If we include the travel time our volunteers have invested reaching our far-flung worksites, this number nearly doubles. No other hands-on conservation program in Utah measures up. And none can claim our sharp focus on the preservation and restoration of designated wilderness and wilderness-quality lands.
This year alone, our crews have worked with our Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and US Forest Service partners to close over 18 miles of illegal off-road vehicle (ORV) routes, rehabilitate over 9,000 square feet of ground surface, restore over 60 illegal campsites and remove more than 80 fire rings on wilderness-quality lands, carry out nearly 150 pounds of trash from wild places, survey over 230 acres for cultural resources, monitor 17 river miles for refuse and camping compliance, and install dozens of wilderness signs identifying protected lands in Utah. Our major emphasis this year has been the important work of implementing congressional wilderness protections in and around the San Rafael Swell—work that we will continue to support in 2022 and beyond.
Emery County Wilderness Area Management
Working with the Price BLM on wilderness area management exclusively, we accomplished the following in 2021:
- 58 volunteers provided over 590 hours of in-field volunteer service.
- 160 hours of direct staff time were devoted to working on field scoping, volunteer recruitment and management, project travel and facilitation, project reporting, and correspondence.
- An annual total of 750 service hours—the equivalent of 94 work days or 4.5 months of full-time service—were spent working directly on wilderness protection in Emery County.
April through October, we targeted areas along the eastern and western boundaries of the Mexican Mountain Wilderness, sites along the eastern flank of the Sids Mountain Wilderness, and locations across the entire boundary of the San Rafael Reef Wilderness. Over six projects, we completed “stage one” protections aimed at ORV compliance in these designated wilderness areas. We will continue to monitor the San Rafael Reef, Mexican Mountain, and Sids Mountain Wilderness Areas for issues that may arise—and we will manage the sites we have worked on in the past. Through the end of the year and into 2022, we will begin assessing problem sites in the Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness, with plans to move forward into the Muddy Creek Wilderness in early 2022.
As the history of management in places such as the Cedar Mountain Wilderness have shown, it takes years of persistence to effectively manage wilderness boundaries while slowly discouraging and minimizing harmful (and often illegal) activity. As recreation and travel plans are shaped and implemented, and as the impacts of industrialized recreation create new challenges for wild places, we know that our stewardship work will require consistent review, redesign, and reinforcement. We are committed to the work at hand.
Advancing Youth and BIPOC Engagement in SUWA Stewardship
Essential to our work educating and training the next generation of public land stewards and SUWA supporters are our partnerships with institutions uplifting individuals from communities historically underrepresented in the conversation and fight for public lands protection. In 2021, we continued our partnership with the University of Utah’s Bennion Center to work with First Generation College Students on Alternative Break in the San Rafael Swell. As well, we facilitated a project in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument for First Year Diversity Scholars at the university—students fulfilling the service requirements of their tuition scholarships. In addition, we continue to offer direct scholarships to BIPOC students across the Colorado Plateau.
Moving forward, we will continue to focus our outreach efforts on communities historically underserved in the outdoors. We plan to connect further with university programs supporting BIPOC students, Utah-based LGBTQ+ organizations, Latinx outdoors groups in Utah and on the West Coast, and more.
2021 Work Accomplished—at a Glance
- 18 miles of illegal ORV routes managed for closure
- 9,120 square feet of surface rehabilitation performed
- (56) wilderness signs, (12) wilderness study area (WSA) signs; (3) restoration area signs; (3) cultural resource protection signs
- (22) gabion baskets built and 1,363’ of log & block barrier installed
- (59) illegal campsites remediated & (82) fire rings removed
- 230 acres surveyed for cultural resources, +3.5 miles road corridor
- (17) miles of river corridor managed for refuse, camping compliance
- (145) lbs of trash removed from wilderness
Stewardship Numbers – Through The Years
- 2021 Volunteer Hours: 3,193 / 2016-2021 Volunteer Hours: 11,534
- 2021 Volunteers Managed: 191 / 2016-2021 Volunteers: 905
- 2021 Project Days: 48 / 2016-2021 Project Days: 185
Stewardship Projects – Where We’ve Been
Stewardship Projects – Highlights
Of course, none of this would be possible without your service. As our staff spends the winter developing work proposals for the season ahead, I invite you to register today to join the ranks of our committed stewardship volunteers at suwa.org/apply.See you out there next season. And thank you for all your hard work.
Jeremy Lynch (he/him)
Stewardship Director | Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
(435) 259-9151
volunteer@suwa.org
