Representative Rob Bishop’s draft legislation for the public lands of eastern Utah is a disaster. It is a fossil fuels bill that rolls back wilderness and advances the Utah land grab. Please tell Rep. Bishop to fix the following four things:
(1) Designate More Real Wilderness. This legislation would result in effectively less public land being managed for wilderness values than is the case today and substitutes novel loopholes for real wilderness protection. Please tell Bishop to provide real wilderness protection for the 5.7 million acres of deserving public land in this region.
(2) Protect Bears Ears. This legislation fails to protect the cultural and natural resources of the proposed Bears Ears National Monument. Tell Bishop to designate the Bears Ears National Monument as proposed by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition.
(3) Give Up the Land Grab. Bishop’s legislation is intended to facilitate the State of Utah’s efforts to seize control of federal lands. Please tell Bishop to drop the land grab efforts and remove his road giveaways, land transfers, and ceding of land management authority to county commissioners.
(4) Cut Out the Climate Change. This legislation would foster massive levels of fossil fuel development. Tell Bishop that is not what our country needs and ask him to remove his energy zone language, wilderness carve-outs, energy-bearing land transfers, and the Book Cliffs highway.
Please submit your comments via the PLI website at http://www.utahpli.com/(scroll to bottom of page).