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Supporters and wilderness advocates like you play a critical role in the protection of Utah’s spectacular wild places.
Join our email list to stay informed about Utah wilderness.
Supporters and wilderness advocates like you play a critical role in the protection of Utah’s spectacular wild places.
Donations of $35 or more automatically include a year’s membership in SUWA.
If you are within six weeks of your annual renewal date or if your membership has lapsed, any gift you make of $35 or more will be processed as a membership renewal.
*Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is a 501(c)3 nonprofit. All contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is hiring a full-time Latino Community Organizer in Salt Lake City. Interested applicants should email a cover letter (one page), resume, a writing sample (original work; a 2nd in Spanish is helpful), and 3 references to Clayton Daughenbaugh at clayton@suwa.org. Please include the words “Latino Community Organizer” and your name in the subject line. The deadline for submission is May 22, 2022. The anticipated start date is August 1, 2022.
Reports to: Executive Director and Organizing Director
Job Description Summary:
The Latino Community Organizer recruits and supports volunteer activists and leaders to broaden SUWA’s base of support to reflect the changing demographic of the American public by building Latino community support for wilderness in Utah, ultimately laying the foundation for activism on our issues across the country. The primary focus is building, maintaining and demonstrating support within the Latino/Latinx communities of Utah for SUWA’s congressional and administrative efforts to protect Utah’s wilderness lands.
Working with the organizing team, the organizer is a flexible team player who will plan and implement organizing activities in Utah building from and growing the base established on the Wasatch Front, and develop and maintain a grass roots and grass tops network of Latino community supporters across the state. This network is additionally intended to be influential with and form a base line for support of Latinx leaders to act across the region and the nation focusing on the protection of wild places and the role they play in mitigating the climate and extinction crises.
Qualifications:
Responsibilities Include:
This position will start at $40,000 per year; with paid health insurance; a 3.5% contribution to a 403b plan; 14 paid holidays; 3 weeks of vacation to start; and other benefits. (Benefits begin after a 60-day probation period.)
Currently the position is a blending of in-office and at-home work time. Circumstances permitting, SUWA supports the collegiality of working together in a common location.
SUWA is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the outstanding wilderness at the heart of the Colorado Plateau, and the management of these lands in their natural state for the benefit of all Americans. SUWA promotes local and national recognition of the region’s unique character through research and public education; supports both administrative and legislative initiatives to permanently protect Colorado Plateau wild places within the National Park and National Wilderness Preservation Systems, or by other protective designations where appropriate; builds support for such initiatives on both the local and national level; and provides leadership within the conservation movement through uncompromising advocacy for wilderness preservation. The lands we work to protect are the ancestral homelands of many Tribes. We are committed to expanding present-day collaboration with our Tribal neighbors.
SUWA is committed to workplace diversity and inclusion. SUWA is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.
More than a year ago, President Biden directed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to pause all new oil and gas leasing on public lands while the agency conducted a comprehensive review of its outdated oil and gas program. The leasing pause was part of a broader executive order meant to address the climate crisis and represented a much needed pivot away from the prior administration’s relentless assault on our public lands.
Immediately after the president ordered the leasing pause, the state of Utah and pro-drilling groups such as the Western Energy Alliance launched an aggressive campaign claiming the pause would have devastating effects on Utah’s rural economy. These doomsday predictions were wildly inaccurate.
Now, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the calls for more public land leasing and development have grown louder. But the clamor for more extraction is a thinly a veiled attempt by fossil fuel interests to profit from the ongoing conflict. It is also based on a false premise: that more public land leasing will lead to more drilling and production, which in turn will lower the price of oil and natural gas.
Not so.
Most oil and gas drilling in Utah and across the United States takes place on state and private lands, not public lands. And on public lands, operators have stockpiled millions of acres of unused leases and more than 9,000 unused (but approved) drilling permits (see our recent blog post for more on this).
The war in Ukraine has made it clear that the world needs to become significantly less, not more, reliant on fossil fuels. Meanwhile, climate scientists are speaking in one unified voice and telling us in no uncertain terms that if we continue drilling, transporting, and burning fossil fuels we are risking everything.
For far too long the BLM has wrongly elevated oil and gas leasing and development as the primary use of our nation’s public lands, threatening our climate, wild places, cultural heritage, and the continued existence of thousands of species. This unbalanced approach must stop now. Our wild places—and the climate crisis—demand no less.
Our e-newsletter with the latest on redrock wilderness news and events.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is developing a motorized travel management plan for the greater Paunsaugunt area near Kanab, located just west of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and south of Bryce Canyon National Park. The plan will determine where off-road vehicle (ORV) use is allowed in this incredible place for decades to come.
Check out our latest story map below to learn more, then take action by submitting comments to the BLM by the March 25th deadline.
How do we balance off-road vehicle use with the critical need to protect southern Utah’s redrock wilderness?
Anyone who visits southern Utah will inevitably hear the whine of off-road vehicles (ORVs) and see how their use has scarred the landscape. In southern Utah especially, the recent exponential growth of ORV recreation has led to stream erosion and water pollution, dust and soil erosion, destruction of wildlife habitat, damage to archaeological sites and cultural resources, and increased conflicts between public land users.
Travel management is one tool that can help us to take part in the creation of thoughtful, balanced plans that provide access– not excess– when it comes to off-road vehicle use and mitigate impacts to wilderness. Tune in to hear all about it (including how you can take action right now!) from SUWA’s ORV Policy Fellow, Kelsey Cruickshank.
Comment now on the scoping plans for Paunsaugunt (Kanab, UT) travel management area!
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Theme music is by Haley Noel Austin, with interlude music by Larry Pattis.
Dave Pacheco is the host of Wild Utah.
Post studio production and editing is by Laura Borichevsky.
A transcript of this episode can be found here.