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December 16th, 2019Read More »The Red Rock bill would protect 8.2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management lands in Utah, including some of the wildest landscapes in the lower 48 states—places like Cedar Mesa, the Escalante Canyons, and the Kaiparowits Plateau.
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December 16th, 2019Offers public only 30 days, including over the holidays, to submit comments on a plan that has been years in the making.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Laura Peterson, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, 801-236-3762, laura@suwa.org
Soren Jespersen, The Wilderness Society, 970-819-7377, soren_jespersen@tws.orgSalt Lake City, UT (December 16, 2019) – On Friday, December 13, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) quietly released a draft travel management plan for the San Rafael Desert in Emery County, Utah that will forever change the area’s stunning and remote wild lands, turning it into a playground for off-road vehicles.
The San Rafael Desert travel plan is the first of thirteen travel plans that BLM will complete over the next six years as a part of a court-supervised settlement agreement with conservation and off-road vehicle groups. These thirteen travel plans will determine where motorized vehicles will be allowed in some of Utah’s wildest public lands, including the Dirty Devil, San Rafael Swell and Vermillion Cliffs.
The San Rafael Desert is a sublime area of Utah’s backcountry, encompassing the newly-designated Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness and wilderness-quality lands such as Sweetwater Reef and the San Rafael River. It features stunning redrock canyons, important cultural sites, and an outstanding diversity of native pollinators (bees and wasps). BLM’s draft plan would inundate this remote area with off-road vehicle routes, more than doubling the miles open to motorized vehicles from 300 miles to more than 775 miles.
Labyrinth Canyon, (c) Ray Bloxham/Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Re-use with attribution permitted.
“The BLM’s draft travel plan is short-sighted and wholly fails to account for the diverse array of public land resources and user groups,” said Laura Peterson, staff attorney at Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “Rather than capitalize on an opportunity to develop a reasonable, manageable and forward-thinking travel plan that ensures public access while preserving the backcountry and minimizing damage, the BLM’s plan does exactly the opposite. It proposes to designate any cow path, wash bottom and line on a map as open to off-road vehicles. The BLM’s plan would open popular hiking trails to motorized vehicle use. It would designate routes that will bisect wildlife habitat, fragment wild lands and damage important cultural sites.”
Federal law requires BLM to minimize impacts to natural and cultural resources when designating motorized vehicle routes. This includes minimizing damage to soils, watershed, vegetation, wildlife habitat, and cultural sites; minimizing the harassment of wildlife as well as conflicts between different public land user groups; and minimizing impacts of motorized vehicle routes on wilderness values like naturalness and solitude. BLM’s San Rafael Desert travel plan falls woefully short of meeting its legal obligation.
“BLM’s draft plan is as one-sided as they come,” said Soren Jespersen, Senior Field Representative at The Wilderness Society. “The plan would nearly double the amount of motorized roads and trails in the San Rafael Desert including by adding miles roads that do not exist on the ground today. This isn’t travel management, it’s a travel free-for-all, and it’s not what visitors to the San Rafael Desert come to experience.”
The BLM is giving the public only 30 days during the busy holiday season to review its proposed travel management plan and submit written comments.
More information, including maps and photographs of currently-designated and proposed motorized vehicle routes, is available here.
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December 10th, 2019
Utah’s public lands are facing death by a thousand cuts. And now the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area (NCA) near St. George—home to the densest population of threatened Mojave desert tortoise anywhere on earth—is on the chopping block.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is being pressured by Washington County, Utah, to let the State of Utah build a four-lane highway through the heart of the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area.
They’re hoping to sneak this proposal through during the holiday season—and they’ve given just 30 days for the public to comment.
Tell the BLM: no way to a highway through the Red Cliffs NCA!
If this highway is allowed it will:
● Bisect Red Cliffs NCA east to west with a four-lane highway;
● Irrevocably damage habitat for the already-threatened Mojave desert tortoise and 20 other species of sensitive wildlife; and
● Set a terrible national precedent that National Conservation Areas can be bulldozed and paved.
We can’t let Washington County succeed in creating a major loophole in the Endangered Species Act, letting them go back on a promise made in 1996 to permanently protect Red Cliffs, the threatened Mojave desert tortoise, and quality of life in southern Utah.
Please take action today. Tell the BLM to protect the Mojave desert tortoise and the integrity of Red Cliffs National Conservation Area by rejecting the “Northern Corridor” highway proposal today.
Click here to tell the BLM what you think of their plans to build a highway through Red Cliffs NCA.Thank you for taking action.
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December 6th, 2019The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is considering giving away the United States’ interest to a 10-mile dirt road (the so-called “Manganese Road”) in the southwest corner of Utah. This is a test case brought by the State of Utah that, if successful, would open the door for the Trump administration to cede control of tens of thousands of miles of dirt roads and trails that Utah claims as rights-of-way across federal public lands.
The State of Utah and its counties have filed more than 20 federal lawsuits claiming title to 14,000 alleged rights-of-way totaling approximately 35,000 miles. They are pursuing their claims under an obscure provision of the 1866 Mining Act known as “Revised Statute 2477” (aka R.S. 2477).
A State of Utah R.S. 2477 claim in the Paria River streambed (Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Paria-Hackberry Wilderness Study Area). Photo © Ray Bloxham/SUWA
The Trump administration’s BLM is trying to give the state a leg up by using a controversial and unlawful tool known as a “recordable disclaimer of interest” (RDI) to simply surrender control over federal public lands to the State of Utah and its counties. In other words, the BLM is essentially telling the state “don’t bother with that cumbersome litigation, we’ll just give you everything you’re after.”
Click here to tell the BLM to reject the state’s unlawful RDI application! The public comment deadline is this Monday, December 9th.
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. Many of these claims are nothing more than cow paths, streambeds, and two-tracks in the desert.
And make no mistake about it, if Utah secures title to these federal lands it has been outspoken about its intent to widen, improve, and even pave these dirt paths and trails in an effort to take control of public lands and prevent wilderness protection.
The BLM is giving the public only 30 days during the busy holiday season to review Utah’s proposal and submit written comments. To make matters worse, the agency is only providing the one-sided application from Utah for reference and is refusing to share the agency’s own information and analysis about this claim. At this point the BLM does not plan to offer a second comment period to allow the public to review and comment on the agency’s findings.
The BLM may approve the State of Utah’s RDI application as soon as February 2020.
Please join with our Senate champion Richard Durbin, along with Senators Feinstein, Baldwin, Udall, and Heinrich, and tell the BLM to reject Utah’s RDI application.
Thank you!
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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!
