TWO VIEWS on WILDERNESS ' The debate on wilderness designation moves into a new century and opinions still vary, even among environmentalists Dick Carter Liz Thomas Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance WHY PROTECT ALL THAT IS LEFT? Huge amounts of wilderness have been lost across fren. Four hundred years ago most of the eastern United States was covered with deciduous forests thick, towering stands of countless species. Virtually none of these original forests remain today. Two hundred years ago, tall grass prairies spanned the plains from one horizon to the other, supporting huge herds of buffalo. Most of these native prairies are, gone, as are the species that depended upon them. Only 150 years ago majestic and ancient redwood forests were commonplace in the western band of states. Today, these cathedral-like redwood forests exist only in small islands of protected lands, 5% of their original number. As recently as 50 years ago, one could float 200 miles down the wild Colorado River from Moab to Lees Ferry scarcely seeing anything connected with our growing civilization. Today, half of the river and its canyons are under Lake Powell. The point: In just a few generations, a large majority of America’s wilderness has been lost. Despite these huge and tragic losses, however, there is still some incredible wilderness out there that has not been tarnished by our propensity to construct, control, and manipulate nature. There are still places in the Escalante where the only footprints are from lizards and the only lights at night are the incredibly bright stars hanging in the darkest of night skies. There are places in the West Desert where one can gaze out over hundreds of miles at mountain ranges draped in Van Gogh colors and hear only the wind. And there are still slickrock canyons where the cackle of the prospecting raven or the whisper of the owl's stealth flight at night is the only ruckus. Granted, we used to have a whole lot more, but the wild and spectacular places that e've got left in Utah are pretty damn good and it’s well — making a concerted and wholehained effort to protect them from further "progress.' PROTECT THE STATUS QUO Over the past 150 years we have lost nearly two-thirds of Utah’s wilderness to development and other human folly. In light of these incredible losses--the drowning of Glen Canyon, and the general exploitation 6f 13 million out of the 22 million acres of Utah BLM lands--the most reasonable and responsible thing to do at this juncture is to protect all the remaining wilderness. Nothing radical, just protect the status quo. Q: What do you call the guy oe High Uintas Preservation Council With deep trepidation I enter this debate again, from the sidelines, but with a history that goes back to proverbial “day 1” of the BLM Wilderness Review. I was in Washington, D.C., working with The Wilderness Society (TWS) in 1976 when the Federal Land Management Policy Act (FLPMA) was in the final stages of debate in Congress. I was on a sort of job training as a Resource Policy Analyst, having no idea what that meant, really biding my time to come back to Utah and be the Utah Regional Representative for TWS. I remember testifying at the first FLPMA Oversight Hearing in Reno, Nevada--I think it was the summer of 1977 (summer, I know, because I flew the old stuffy vomit comet from SLC to Wendover, down to Ely, up to Elko, Wells; you get the picture). I testified in support of Section 603, the Wilderness Review section of FLPMA, and how questionably BLM was starting the wilderness review process. Then I flew the comet back to SLC. A little later we organized the Utah Wilderness Association (UWA) in 1979 when The | Wilderness Society fired me for refusing to move back to Washington, D.C. for an extended period of time. We were right in the middle of the BLM Wilderness Review, which, then and now, seemed more important. In 1980-81 UWA organized and filed the first of two appeals before the Interior Board of Land Appeals (UWA et al.) which resulted in decisive victories for environmentalists and set forth a deep suspicion that BLM, in the earliest days of the BLM wilderness review, simply refused to take wilderness seriously. This fear defined the initial dance between conservationists and BLM. But there is even more to this appeal. In its earliest stages some of the national conservation groups feared the appeal, national in scope, should not be in the hands of a statewide organization like the Utah Wilderness Association. While they eventually joined with us on the appeal, it defined a bit of discord between conservationists. This played itself out in the passagé’of the Utah Wilderness Act of 1984 and has become a sort of regular affair among conservationists--not just in Utah. It has all sorts of thematic variations and often becomes personal because of the effort, passion and deep importance of preserving wildness. This came into sharper focus and much more controversy when the fledgling Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (GUWA) and Utah Wilderness Coalition (UWC), the established Utah Wilderness Association, the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, and a host of other groups and local conservationists met in 1985 to construct a statewide and uniform BLM S at the center of the hub? A: The Hub-Bub Moab's FIRST & BEST Bike Shop 94 W. 100 North 259.5333 "The Hub of Cycling in Moab" ae a rimcyclery.com a