Public Lands S.O.S.

Utah Photos: Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks, and Brian Head

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Land-use issues in Utah are almost as complex as the land itself. It seems every new political administration ushers in a new slew of lawsuits, editorials, and policy changes that aim either to save or develop the areas around Utah's national parks, forests, and wilderness areas. Most recently, a case study is being made out of the Book Cliffs area, first discovered by 19th-century explorer John Wesley Powell. Located 120 miles southeast of Utah, it is an area of rugged canyon-lands and juniper forests sliced in half by the Class II-III Green River. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages most of the area's 200,000-plus acres, but unlike national parks and forests, not all of the land is protected as wilderness. Much of the area lies in "multi-use" zones, where recreationalists such as hikers, campers, or kayakers share the land with oil, gas, and ranching interests.

In 1999, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt ordered the BLM to reinventory 3.1 million acres of land in Utah, and the agency found 2.6 million acres that it deemed had "wilderness characteristics." Unlike Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) set up in the early 1980s, these so-called "Wilderness Inventory Areas," or WIAs, had no legal protections. The BLM held off on any oil and gas leases in these areas while a lawsuit between the State of Utah and the federal government—in which Utah contended that the U.S. could not establish new WSAs—was settled. In April 2003, then-Governor Mike Leavitt and Bush's Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton settled the lawsuit, clearing the way for new policies that forced the BLM to consider oil and gas leases in WIAs. This was contested this April when ten environmental groups filed an appeal in court, although there is no timeline yet for when this will be heard.

Regardless of the still-bubbling legal faceoff, in November 2003 the BLM granted 33 oil and gas applications, some on WIAs, netting $6.3 million. In the Book Cliffs region, ten applications were considered and eight were granted. Environmental groups, such as the Wilderness Society, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club all protested, claiming that the Bush administration was in cahoots with the state to sellout these natural wonders to commercial interests. They pointed to leases near the Book Cliffs' Desolation Canyon—one of Utah's most popular kayaking destinations—floated each year by around 7,000 people. Desolation Canyon was described by the BLM itself in the 1999 reinventory as "a place where visitors can experience true solitude—where the forces of nature continue to shape the jagged, colorful landscape." Other threatened areas of Book Cliffs are home to wintering populations of bald eagles and peregrine falcons.

BLM officials defended the sales, noting that oil and gas development has always gone on in and around Book Cliffs, and that the leases contain provisions that limit or prohibit above-ground development that would spoil the landscape. Environmentalists counter that argument saying that any more development will lead to particulate emissions and oil-pads that will scar the landscape for years to come. Lawsuits are in the making to block the leases, but unless these areas in Book Cliffs gain wilderness protection, their fate remains tied to the policies of each new administration.