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Show MOUNTAIN Eco-Warrior SUWA’s Moves Ken On Rait Bids Farewell to Utah F° Utah’s political powerbrokers, the name Ken Rait is worse than fingernails scratching across a blackboard. For the past 6 1/2 years, Rait and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance have been monkeywrenching the federal Bureau of Land Management's attempts to do busi‘ ness as usual - that is, making federal land available to extractive industries at giveaway prices. But from now, fresh the biggest ronmental Utah’s envi- victory history — in the while the delegation’s proposal grew in unpopularity. “The Utah Congressional delegation tried to shaft the Utah public and SUWA came to be recognized as an organization that would advocate the citizen’s position. The Utah delegation . moved SUWA to the mainstream,” Rait said in a recent interview before his departure. When Rait joined SUWA in 1990, then directed by Brent Calkin and Susan Tixier, the organization was housed in a drafty struc- ture downtown. defeat in Congress of the so-called Utah Wilderness Bill, sponsored by the governor and the entire Utah Ken Congressional delegation — Rait is leaving his post as issues director for SUWA. The Buffalo, New York native is moving on to the Northwest to fight for trees and salmon. Branded by some as an outside agitator, Rait was among a small cadre of people who made up the front line of the citizen’s army for a greater red rock wildnerness in Utah. Although some 140 organizations made up the Utah Wilderness Coalition, SUWA has been the most vocal and most visible. And of SUWA’s leaders, Rait has been one of the most often quoted by news media. “While the wilderness dream remains unfullfilled, the issue I fought most intensely, the Andalex coal field in the Kaiparowits Plateau, has been neutralized by the creation of the monument,” Rait said referring to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. But perhaps an even larger victory, although the red rock wilderness war is far from over, was the grassroots initiatives that stopped Gov. Mike Leavitt and the Utah Congressional delegation from succeeding in a bid to limit forever federally designated wilderness to 1.8 million acres in Utah as well as the defacto gutting of the 1964 Wilderness Act. The Utah bill would have allowed roads, dams, powerlines and other uses disallowed comes from the blue collar town workers. ‘In Buffalo, no a boatload of Orrin Hatch and federal Rep. Jim Hansen was no small task. It required a public relations war in all 50 states. turers,” Rait recalled. “But in the West, politicians are still working to hold up a slavery-era mining law, to enrich big corporations. The same politicians bol- ster the cattle industry with oodles of subsidies,” he said. “In the west, there are only 27,000 public land permitees who are treated Although Rait was not alone, he did play a significant role educating Utah and other news media to the realities of the Utah bill. As the battle dragged on from January SUWA became 1995 to March increasingly 1996, popular Worcester, Mass. before Rait The Utah Cougar Coalition and lobbied for tougher poachwas formed in response to the ing laws. need for stronger legal protecWe are dedicated to the idea tions for Utah’s cougars What is the that science and ethics, and other predators. not politics, should be Since our organization Mission of the guiding principle of was founded we have wildlife management. The Utah opposed the increased Every Species has a number of cougar a Cougar ne) role to play in : ing permits, argue oe ealthy ecosystem an against a proposal by Coalition? should not be overAnimal Damage Control to aerihunted or persecuted because it al gun coyotes in Wilderness preys upon other, more visible Study Areas in the Book Cliffs, or popular animals. one reached out subsides to help at Clark country,” oalition Bethlehem Steel or the auto manufac- degrees rock SUC O em O ityTy ing the history of laid-off auto and steel with red explains. As he looks forward to new personal challenges, Rait laments that the red rock wilderness war is back to square one. Gov. Leavitt is proposing an incremental wilderness, a plan Rait says is nothing more than the same old philosophy in a new package. And most recently, Sen. Bob Bennett has proposed a law that he says will keep President Clinton true to his promises on the Grand StaircaseEscalante Monument, but legislation Rait insists would gut it. “This is no different than what they tried to do with wilderness. This is nothing less than an attack on the nations’s heritage of national monuments,” Rait said. Old warriors just don’t die, they move to Portland. @ of Mater’s Sen. of “It would be nothing less than a priviledge to work on preserving the spectacular Buffalo, light years from the liberal bastion of Manhattan. Rait took a lot of Buffalo with him when he left, includ- by definition for an obscure environmental organization in Utah? “In the wilderness. The defeat of twin bills sponsored the Tixier at the upstart SUWA. But why would a young man desert a Ph.D. program to go to work winter we had to wear jackets, in summer, we could barely wear shorts,” Rait recalls. Rait From a membership of about 5,000 then, the aftermath of the red rock wilderness battles saw SUWA grow to almost 25,000 members. No longer the little-known band of “environmental extremists’ fighting local BLM officials over every inch of dirt, SUWA now commands respect and operates on a grander level, evidenced by an office in Washington D.C., as well as its more modern Salt Lake City base, with satellites in Moab and St. George. “In 1997, the Utah politicians recognize that they are going to have to deal with us. From their standpoint, it’s probably the realization of a nightmare,” Rait said. Although Rait is a New Yorker, he a hell of a lot better than the unemployed steel workers of the northeast. So, I’m not sympathetic to their incessant whinning.” Rait earned his Bachelor’s and by the 33-year-old law and would have changed TIMES University in moving to o join the Utah Cougar Coalition fill out this form and send it in with your donation.* For more information please write to us at the address below or e-mail us at Utah.Predator@Worldnet.att.net. Anyone who requests information or joins will receive a free booklet entitled “Living with Cougar and Black Bear.” Send your donation to: Utah Cougar Coalition, 165 S. Main St., Salt Lake City, UT 84111 QO $15-$25 Member Tucson, Ariz. to work toward a Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. It was QO $100 Patron QO Other: Street Address there that he headed up the local Sierra Club and was appointed to both state City State/Province and county citizen planning boards. But it was his Sierra Club position that soon put him in touch with Calkin and PAGE Q $50 Friend Name. Zip/Postal Code: EMail “Donations to the Utah Cougar Coalition are not tax deductivie due to our involvement in the political process. 13 |