In a surprise move, Utah Rep. Chris Cannon, R, says
he wants to see more wilderness in the San Rafael Swell of southern
Utah, and he’s written a new bill to prove
it.
Cannon’s bill would designate as wilderness
about 400,000 acres of BLM land in the San Rafael Swell, and it
would also set aside areas for nonmotorized use and bighorn sheep
management.
But it would also prevent the Bureau
of Land Management from considering any more land in Emery and
Carbon counties for wilderness status, effectively eliminating more
than 650,000 acres from another congressional bill, the citizens’
proposal for 5.7 million acres of wilderness in
Utah.
“We’re ginning up a full-court press to
stop this thing,” says Scott Groene of the Southern Utah Wilderness
Alliance. “It’s clearly an anti-wilderness bill.”
Groene says the bill would validate “a spaghetti
plate” of road claims in the Swell. It would also get rid of
interim wilderness protection for about 140,000 acres of land and
allow some motorized use in wilderness
areas.
Jeff Hartley, spokesman for Rep. Cannon,
counters, “It’s the same old noise we’ve heard before from people
who refuse to compromise.”
But national BLM
director Pat Shea also opposes the plan, and says his agency will
recommend a presidential veto.
Utah Sen. Bob
Bennett, R, has agreed to introduce the bill into the Senate, says
Hartley, and is expected to make some changes in order to address
the concerns of the Bureau of Land Management. The text of H.R.
3625 can be found on the Web at http://thomas.loc.gov. – Michelle
Nijhuis
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline All’s not Swell.
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