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SUWA Action Alerts Archives
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October 10th, 2019From Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Capitol Reef national parks to Dinosaur, Hovenweep, Natural Bridges, and Cedar Breaks national monuments, Utah is home to some of the most spectacular and beloved jewels of the National Park System. But these world-renowned landscapes are now threatened by a shortsighted directive from the Trump administration to open all park roads (both paved and unpaved) to off-road vehicles, including ATVs and UTVs.
As the term “off-road vehicle” clearly implies, these machines are designed specifically to travel off-road and beyond the reach of standard passenger vehicles into rugged backcountry terrain. Even on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, where such vehicles already have tens of thousands of routes open to their use, managing illegal off-road use is a nightmare for agency officials.
The National Park Service, which is dedicated to “conserving unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System,” is ill-equipped to handle the problems that will inevitably arise.
The Trump administration wants to open all National Park Service roads in Utah to off-road vehicles, including UTVs like the ones pictured above. Photo: iStock.com/marekuliasz
If the Trump administration has its way, natural and cultural resources will be put at risk from irresponsible and illegal off-road vehicle use on park roads, and the silence and unspoiled views in places like the White Rim and Maze District of Canyonlands National Park and Cathedral Valley in Capitol Reef National Park will be broken by the invasive engine noise and dust clouds generated by these incompatible machines.
If that’s not bad enough, the administration is attempting to force off-road vehicle use into Utah’s national parks and national monuments with no analysis of impacts and no public input. This is remarkable given the Park Service’s prior determination that off-road vehicles pose “a significant risk to park resources and values which cannot be appropriately mitigated,” and their use is “not consistent with the protection of the parks and monuments.” The agency even acknowledged that “[n]o reasonable level of law enforcement presence would be sufficient to prevent . . . use off roads.”
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September 17th, 2019Read More »SUWA and partners win appeal of plan to masticate and chain Skutumpah Terrace in GSENM.
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May 30th, 2019Without prior notice or opportunity for public input, the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Richfield field office announced last Wednesday—just before Memorial Day weekend—that it has opened 5,400 acres of public lands surrounding Utah’s iconic Factory Butte to unfettered cross-country off-road vehicle (ORV) use.
The BLM’s decision reverses the agency’s 2006 closure of the area to ORV use and will allow unrestricted motorized travel throughout the designated “play area.” When the BLM implemented the 2006 closure it explained that “Factory Butte itself is an iconic formation, highly visible from Highway 24 and is often photographed.”
Please take action! Tell the BLM what you think of its decision to open Factory Butte to off-road vehicle destruction.
Call or email Joelle McCarthy, the BLM’s Richfield Field Office Manager, today!
jmccarth@blm.gov
435-896-1501Tell the BLM:
- It’s ridiculous that the agency re-opened Factory Butte to motorized use after being closed for nearly 13 years without seeking public input beforehand and without giving any advance notice. The BLM manages places like Factory Butte on behalf of the public and is accountable for its decisions.
- Post signs! ORV riders—even those who are well intentioned—won’t stay in the newly designated “open area” if that area is not easy to distinguish on the ground. The BLM has placed no signs on the inside of the “play area,” meaning there is nothing to keep riders off the butte itself. And contrary to the agency’s claims in its press release announcing that the area is open to cross-country use, the trend of violations by ORV riders around Factory Butte is on the rise.
- The BLM is destroying an iconic landscape! The agency’s decision ensures that one of Utah’s most recognizable landscapes will be defaced and damaged for years to come. Contrary to popular myth, these tracks don’t simply disappear after the next rain!
Click here for more information on the BLM’s opening of Factory Butte.
Longtime SUWA members will recall that protecting Factory Butte was a major fight in the late 90s and early 2000s. The closure of the area to ORV abuse in 2006 gave the land a much-needed chance to recover.
The BLM’s decision last week is further proof that the Trump administration has found its legs, and that no previous environmental victory is safe from those who would destroy Utah’s wildlands.
Please take action today. The BLM needs to hear from you.
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March 28th, 2019Following public outcry and a formal protest from SUWA, this week the Utah Bureau of Land Management (BLM) deferred all of its proposed oil and gas leases in San Juan County from its March 2019 lease sale “due to additional environmental analysis required.”
The proposed leases were on the doorstep of Bears Ears, Hovenweep, and Canyons of the Ancients national monuments.*
Simply put, these leases would not have been deferred if not for SUWA’s tireless defense of every acre of BLM public land deserving of wilderness protection in Utah.
It’s the nature of environmental defense that this victory is short-lived—although deferred, the parcels will likely be back up for sale at the September 2019 lease sale.But SUWA will be there to fight those leases, too, and this decision by the BLM puts us in a strong position in our challenges to other BLM lease sales (from March and December 2018), because those lease sales relied on the same environmental analysis (surprise!). If it is insufficient now, then it was insufficient then.
Not all of our work results in victories, of course, and most of our work never makes the news. But you can be assured that SUWA will never give up and never give an inch in our defense of the Redrock.
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February 26th, 2019We’re delighted to tell you that the Emery County Public Land Management Act just passed the U.S. House of Representatives and now heads to the president’s desk for his signature. (Yes, he’s expected to sign.)
Take a moment to appreciate just how historic this victory is.
For more than twenty years, the Utah delegation has put forward lousy bills that would have sold the San Rafael Swell short. SUWA opposed all those bills. And now, after a year-long fight, what began again as terrible legislation will instead extend much-needed protection to some of Utah’s most beloved redrock landscapes—places like Muddy Creek and parts of Desolation and Labyrinth Canyons.
Muddy Creek wilderness in the San Rafael Swell. Copyright Ray Bloxham/SUWA
This happened because of people like you. Your emails, phone calls, and contributions made the difference—showing our congressional allies and opponents alike that the American people care about protecting Utah wilderness.
Thanks to you and our Utah Wilderness Coalition allies—the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council—we’ve made this legislation deserving of the places protected.
The result? 663,000 acres of wilderness will now be protected in Emery County! (Click here to view our story map showing what the bill protects.)
We’re grateful to our congressional champions, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Representative Alan Lowenthal (D-CA 47), who each challenged an earlier, flawed version of the bill—flaws that have now been largely addressed.
These lands belong to all Americans, and wilderness bills like this one can only succeed if Utah politicians recognize the national significance of their protection.
To be sure, there are still lands in Emery County and elsewhere deserving of protection, and we will continue to work every day to protect all of Utah’s magnificent redrock wilderness.
But today, it’s time to celebrate.
Thank you for being a critical part of the movement to protect Utah wilderness.
If you live in Utah, please call Representative John Curtis’ office at 202-225-7751, and Sen. Mitt Romney at (202) 224-5251 and thank them for seeing this legislation through.
If you live in California, please call Representative Lowenthal’s’ office at 202-225-7924 and thank him for his hard work to enact this legislation.