Lawson Legate

Lawson joined the Sierra Club in 1976 while living in southeastern British Columbia, where he worked as a Club volunteer to prevent mining in a provincial park wilderness and logging in the Waterton-Glacier International Park area. Lawson was part of the successful effort to establish the Valhalla Wilderness northwest of Nelson, British Columbia.

In 1987 Lawson opened the Sierra Club's field office in Salt Lake City, Utah. Over the past decade, Lawson has been at the center of the national effort to protect America's redrock wilderness. He worked with the Utah Wilderness Coalition to pull together the inventory that is the heart of the recently completed Citizens' Wilderness Proposal in Utah. Utahans discovered three million more acres of wild desert beyond what the federal government said was there. (See Paradise Found for an account of this campaign.)

It's one thing to find new potential wilderness, but how are we going to protect it while we wait around for Congress to act? One way is the Sierra Club's Adopt-A-Wilderness program. This effort matches up volunteers with units of the Utah Citizens' Wilderness Proposal. The volunteer visits it, and then keeps in touch with the Bureau of Land Management to monitor its health. If there is a threat, such as a proposed mine or oil well, the volunteer speaks out for the area's protection.

Concern for wilderness reaches beyond southern Utah, and Lawson has been following wilderness issues all over the country. Want to know what's up with wilderness in your region? Lawson Legate was A guest on GORP from November 13 to December 4, 1998. The discussion focussed on what we can all do to preserve our country's heritage of wild lands.

	Questions to consider The Utah Citizens Wilderness Proposal is particularly exciting because it maps out large areas of contiguous wilderness, reducing fragmentation and promoting biodiversity. Are there areas we should be particularly focused on preserving? Roads into wildlands, especially delicate desert environments, invite the abuse of off-road vehicles and provide entry corridors for invasive plant species. Can we offer"wilderness experience" to the young, the elderly, the disabled who may not be able to hike a stretch? Wilderness opponents claim that closing land off to mining and oil drilling has an unfair economic impact on local economies, particularly in rural areas. Wilderness supporters note that, in Utah alone, tourism pumps about $4 billion into the economy every year, much of which is directly related to recreation in wilderness areas. Will towns near wilderness have a healthier economy with more wilderness protection, or with more mining and oil drilling? Is outdoor recreation just another extractive industry? What are the responsibilities of hikers, paddlers and others who visit wilderness? How can we as a community develop ways to educate ourselves? Discuss these issues with Lawson Legate in GORP's Conservation Forum.

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