You can help protect America’s redrock wilderness – Redrock Report March 2011

Here’s what is happening this month with the redrock:
1.
Show your support for protecting the Greater Canyonlands region.
2.
Ask your members of Congress to protect America’s redrock wilderness!
3.  Participate in grassroots events across the country this April.

Ask the Obama administration to protect Greater Canyonlands

Indian Creek
Indian Creek, photo by Tom Till.

The Greater Canyonlands area — encompassing 1.4 million acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land surrounding Canyonlands National Park — is a landscape of plateaus, stunning geologic formations, 10,000 year-old archaeological sites, and unmatched natural beauty. To protect these scenic landscapes, SUWA has made a formal request to the Secretary of the Interior to bar off-road vehicle (ORV) use in sensitive habitat, streams, wetlands, riparian areas, archaeological sites and other vulnerable areas.

The petition targets damage caused by ORV use as a first step in protecting this iconic landscape. ORV use in the area has too frequently proven unmanageable, with increasing soil erosion, noise, crushed vegetation, degraded streams, and fragmented wildlife habitat. Those who do not use ORVs, and who comprise the vast majority of visitors to Greater Canyonlands, are finding it increasingly difficult to experience the natural quiet, solitude and beauty of the area.

Protecting Greater Canyonlands would also facilitate a complementary and consistent management approach to lands managed by the BLM, National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service. Giving heightened protection to the most valuable and vulnerable places will give these ecosystems their best chance at long term health, especially in an era of rapidly changing climatic and environmental conditions.

HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO:

1. Use our online Action Center to tell Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that you support protecting the Greater Canyonlands region.

2. Sign our online petition asking the Obama administration to protect the Greater Canyonlands region.

3. Tweet that your want Greater Canyonlands protected.



Help us kick off the redrock bill with a bang in the 112th Congress

View the Wilderness Week experience!
WW YouTube

The start of a new Congress (the 112th) means that once again, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) will re-introduce America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act.  Earlier this month, 20 redrock activists from Utah and across the country traveled to DC for Utah Wilderness Week 2011 to lobby members of Congress to become original cosponsors of the bill, which is set to be reintroduced next month.  Why are cosponsors important?  Maintaining a high number of congressional cosponsors will be essential to fending off anti-wilderness attacks in Congress this year.

HERE’S HOW YOU CAN HELP:

1) Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and speak with your Senators’ or Reprensentative’s DC offices, asking that they cosponsor America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act.

2) Go to our Action Center and send emails to your members of Congress, asking that they cosponsor America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act.

3) Sign the petition asking Congress to protect America’s Redrock Wilderness.

Get involved with Utah wilderness at a venue near you!

This April, see our “Wild Utah: America’s Redrock Wilderness” multimedia presentation in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Maine, Vermont, and New Jersey.

If you live in the New York City or Boston areas, SUWA’s Executive Director Scott Groene and Associate Director Scott Braden will be holding coffee hours the first week in April to discuss Utah wilderness with SUWA members.  

Also, if you are in Grand Junction, Aspen, or Carbondale, CO, join SUWA’s Western Regional Organizer Terri Martin in April to hear an inside update about new opportunities to protect Utah’s wildlands, and then brainstorm about how Coloradans can be a voice for their future.

View the full spring slideshow and grassroots event schedule on our website.

To host a slideshow or to recommend a hosting organization or venue, please contact:

In the East: Jackie Feinberg, jackie@suwa.org

In the Midwest: Clayton Daughenbaugh, clayton@suwa.org

In the West: Terri Martin, terri@suwa.org