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Blog Archives
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November 26th, 2019What a year! As we push onward under a deeply problematic administration, we take time to revisit those encouraging stewardship moments and milestones of the past year to buoy us through these trying times. Join us as we recap the year now nearly past, covering our Stewardship Program’s initiatives, progress, and on-the-ground project work in 2019.
A note on our volunteers:
“From the seasoned canyon country savant to the first generation college student camping her first night in wilderness, our volunteers are true stewards of Utah’s wild places. With a passion for learning through experience, a willingness to go where the work is – no matter how far from the familiar, and a commitment to carry the cause from canyon country to community centers, our volunteers (as one BLM ranger put it) “set the bar” for conservation volunteering in Utah.
At the heart of wilderness protection in Utah have always been the wilderness protectors. We all have an obligation not merely to raise the issues, but to raise the voices that weigh wilderness as a fundamental right of the many. These voices – young and old, alike and unalike – reflect back the worldviews that will define our movement through the 21st century. So long as there are willing hands and minds, we will guide them into the wilderness.”
Jeremy Lynch
Stewardship Director
First Generation College Students from the University of Utah work on travel compliance issues near the newly designated Mexican Mountain Wilderness.
Wilderness Stewardship Trainings
In 2019, we hosted the 2nd annual Wilderness Stewardship Training in Washington County as well as the inaugural Salt Lake City Wilderness Stewardship Training. These trainings equip volunteers to collect critical data about on-the-ground conditions in designated wilderness and wilderness study areas. Over the past two years, our Stewards have dedicated hundreds of hours hiking over 500 miles of wilderness boundaries and interiors. The community created around monthly meetings of Stewards have led to improved, targeted management of issues that arise on wilderness-quality lands. This data guides development of best management strategies for protecting these wild places from the impacts of off-road vehicle travel. We could not do any of this work without the perennial commitment of our Stewards!
The inaugural class of SLC Wilderness Stewards at our training in August.
Trainees review America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act proposal maps before visiting actual parcels as part of the two-day training.
Field Service Scholarship
Working with our Grassroots Team, we rolled out the Stewardship Scholars Program to support more inclusive volunteer engagement with underserved communities in Utah. In 2019, (3) scholars joined projects in Grand Staircase-Escalante NM, the Deep Creek Mountains, and the La Sal Mountains. The reciprocity of these efforts will grow in 2020 as we continue to foster new voices through providing equitable opportunities to get involved on-the-ground.
2019 Stewardship Scholars in the La Sal Mountains, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and the Deep Creek Mountains.
Service Projects
With the addition of our Stewardship Coordinator, we conducted more projects and worked with a wider range of volunteer groups in 2019 than in years past. The list includes our steadfast members, a slew of Utah students, our Field Service Scholars, and members of the public from all ages and backgrounds. Combined, our 250 volunteers put in 46 project days and nearly 3,500 hours during 21 service projects on public lands across Utah in 2019. For all that we could say, the pictures speak loudest. Enjoy the “slideshow” – we hope it inspires you to join us again (or for the first time) in 2020!
Students from Salt Lake Community College work on travel compliance in wilderness study areas in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Volunteers joined three projects over seven months installing primary wilderness study area signage across seven West Desert WSAs.
Our Bears Ears volunteers worked with the Forest Service on travel compliance in the Dark Canyon Wilderness.
Two projects addressed wilderness boundary violations in the Cedar Mountain Wilderness. Our small and hearty crews traveled from Salt Lake City in the middle of the week to accomplish the work.
Our second season of work in the Deep Creek Mountains saw volunteers install boundary-delineating buck and rail fence to ensure travel compliance in the Scott’s Basin wilderness study area.
A hearty crew of 20 volunteers backpacked into the High Uintas Wilderness to address camping compliance along lake shorelines above 10,000′. For some, it was their first backpacking experience!
For National Public Lands Day, we took to the river, rafting Westwater Canyon to a site in the wilderness study area in need of native vegetation restoration.
For every long day’s work is a meal with a view in good company. Beat that!
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November 18th, 2019Read More »Our e-newsletter with the latest on redrock wilderness news and events.
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November 13th, 2019
Following a public outcry, an outlandish Interior Department order that was proposed to allow off-road vehicles in national parks in Utah was dropped by the Trump administration. But the controversy over the Park Service proposal raises a larger, under-the-radar ORV issue with the potential for long-term damage to America’s redrock wilderness. In this episode, we discuss how the BLM’s travel management planning has been at the heart of SUWA’s work for more than two decades, and how it’s coming to a head over the next few years. Our guests are SUWA Wildlands Program Director Neal Clark and Staff Attorney Laura Peterson.Wild Utah is produced by Jerry Schmidt and is made possible by the contributing members of SUWA. Our theme music, “What’s Worth?” was written and performed in Moab by Haley Noel Austin.
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November 12th, 2019Fourth Time This Year BLM Has Suspended Leases in Utah; Feds Ignored Climate Change, Opened Scenic, Cultural Lands to Fossil Fuel Extraction
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Stephen Bloch, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, (801) 428-3981, steve@suwa.org
Landon Newell, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, (801) 428-3991, landon@suwa.org
Diana Dascalu-Joffe, Center for Biological Diversity, (720) 925-2521, ddascalujoffe@biologicaldiversity.org
Sarah Stock, Living Rivers, (435) 260-8557, sarah.livingrivers@gmail.comSalt Lake City, UT (November 12, 2019)― The Trump administration has pulled 130 oil and gas leases in Utah because the Bureau of Land Management failed to fully analyze greenhouse gas emissions and the potential harm to climate from fossil fuel extraction. It’s the fourth time this year that the agency has suspended leases for drilling and fracking in Utah ― after the leases were sold ― because they violated federal law.
The BLM’s latest decision to put a temporary hold on leasing activity comes in response to a September lawsuit filed by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, and Living Rivers. The agency pulled the leases from auction in late September.
“The Trump administration’s BLM is writing the textbook on how to make an uninformed and unlawful leasing decision,” said Stephen Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “Utah BLM’s formula has been to lease as much public land as possible, as quickly as possible, and with as little analysis or public involvement as possible. Unsurprisingly, this approach to oil and gas leasing is unlawful.”
The 130 oil and gas leases encompass some of the most scenic, wild and culturally and archaeologically rich public lands in the United States.
Most of the leases are in areas designated by the BLM as having “wilderness characteristics,” which means they’re natural, undisturbed and provide outstanding opportunities for solitude and quiet recreation. This includes the Bitter Creek, Desolation Canyon, Dragon Canyon and White River areas in the Book Cliffs region of the Uinta Basin, and the Eagle Canyon area in the San Rafael Swell.
Eagle Canyon in southern Utah, an area with wilderness characteristics at issue in the litigation.
“The BLM’s uninformed rush to align itself with the Trump administration’s oil and gas ‘energy dominance’ agenda has repeatedly — and unsurprisingly— backfired,” said Landon Newell, staff attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “The agency has tripped over itself in its haste. This is a legal mess of the BLM’s own making.”
Because of challenges brought by conservation groups, the BLM this year has been forced to pull back leases covering more than 300,000 acres of public land in Utah. More information on BLM’s other retracted leasing decisions can be found here, here and here.
“This is another setback for the Trump administration’s irresponsible, illegal decision to lease these beautiful public lands for fracking and drilling,” said Diana Dascalu-Joffe, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “BLM officials are starting to recognize the error of their rush to ignore climate science and public health to unleash a fracking frenzy. Now the administration must acknowledge the irreparable harm these irrational decisions have on our fragile climate.”
“Both human and wildlife communities in the rural regions of the arid west are getting hammered by reckless oil and gas development. We have no choice but to intervene,” said Sarah Stock, program director with Living Rivers. “Oil and gas development on our federal public lands is contributing massively to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. This will almost surely deplete the amount of water available in this region, adding great challenges for water managers and ecosystems in the coming years. The BLM needs to think through the full impact of development before leasing these precious lands.”
In March 2019 a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the BLM had failed to properly analyze the impacts of its oil and gas leasing program on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. This landmark decision requires the agency, for the first time, to provide a detailed accounting of these impacts in each leasing decision. This court ruling has had broad ramifications in Utah and across the United States.
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Living Rivers is a nonprofit environmental membership organization, based in Moab, Utah. Living Rivers promotes river restoration and seeks to revive natural habitat and the spirit of rivers by undoing the extensive damage done by dams, diversions and pollution on the Colorado Plateau. Learn more at www.livingrivers.org
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, is a nonprofit environmental membership organization dedicated to the preservation of outstanding wilderness found throughout Utah and the management of wilderness-quality lands in their natural state for the benefit of all Americans. Learn more at www.suwa.org
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.6 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. Learn more at www.biologicaldiversity.org
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November 8th, 2019Agency may hand over an alleged right-of-way to the state of Utah as it considers unprecedented public land giveaway
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 8, 2019Contacts:
Alison Heis, National Parks Conservation Association, 202.384.8762
Steve Bloch, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 801.859.1552
Jen Ujifusa, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 202.266.0473
Anne Hawke, Natural Resources Defense Council, 646.823.4518
Jennifer Dickson, The Wilderness Society, 303.650.9379(Salt Lake City): The Interior Department announced today that it is considering giving away the United States’ interest to a 10-mile gravel road in the southwest corner of Utah. This is a trial balloon that, if successful, would open the door for the Trump administration to cede control to tens of thousands of miles of dirt roads and trails to the state of Utah, a state notorious for its anti-public lands agenda. The move could affect claimed rights-of-ways in national parks, national monuments, and wilderness areas.
Interior is relying on a controversial and unlawful tool known as “recordable disclaimers of interest” (RDIs) to cede title and control over federal public lands to the state of Utah and its counties. The state of Utah and its counties have filed more than twenty federal lawsuits over its 14,000 alleged rights-of-way. Those claims are brought under an obscure provision of the 1866 Mining Act, known as “R.S. 2477.” The Trump administration is trying to use RDIs to throw in the towel in that federal court litigation.
“If there was ever a case of the camel’s nose under the tent, this is it” said Stephen Bloch, legal director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “If the state of Utah succeeds with this first disclaimer it has thousands of similar claims blanketing Utah’s redrock country waiting in the wings. And make no mistake about it, if Utah secures title to these federal lands the state has been outspoken about its intent to pave these dirt roads and trails in an effort to take control of public lands and stop wilderness protection.”
The George W. Bush administration was the first to attempt to use RDIs to give away public lands. In 2003, the Interior Department issued regulations to guide the use of RDIs to cede control over claimed state and county R.S. 2477 rights-of-way. These regulations are contrary to a longstanding congressional prohibition, in place since 1997, on any such rules. Initial attempts by the Interior Department in the 2000s to issued RDIs in Utah were withdrawn.
“National parks could be next on the chopping block,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president at the National Parks Conservation Association. “Today’s move by the Interior Department poses a real and immediate threat to national parks in Utah and across the West. Every cowpath and two-track can be claimed as a road and given away to virtually anyone under this regulation. Our national parks could be criss-crossed with roads in places where visitors enjoy the natural beauty and cultural sites.”
The Department’s Bureau of Land Management is giving the public only 30 days during the busy holiday season to review its proposal and submit written comments. BLM may approve the state of Utah’s RDI application as soon as February 2020.
“You can’t undo this kind of damage to our public lands legacy,” said Bobby McEnaney, director of the Dirty Energy Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Interior has a duty to act as a steward of the lands and resources we all own—managing them and holding them in trust for future generations. Instead, the Trump administration is brazenly liquidating cherished places in a mercenary fire sale to a state that admits it will exploit them. It’s a reckless move that leaves all of us ecologically poorer.”
The 10-mile claimed R.S. 2477 right-of-way that Interior is proposing to give away is located in Washington County, in southwestern Utah. Maps depicting of the state of Utah’s claimed R.S. 2477 rights-of-way in Washington County are available here and here. Almost every county in the state of Utah has hundreds if not thousands of miles of claimed R.S. 2477 rights-of-way that could be given away through the RDI process.
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