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Show (latch to co-sponsor Garn bill Senator Orrin G. Hatch has joined with Senator Jake Garn in sponsoring legislation legis-lation designed to return control of public lands back to the States. "In the past, the federal government was seen as the temporary custodian of the federal lands until they could be fairly disposed of," Senator Sen-ator Hatch said. He added, "Over the years, the way of thinking about the lands has changed and the policy along with it. It has become the policy for the federal government gov-ernment to hold the land more or less in perpetuity." The land area of the state of Utah is almost 53 million acres, of which close to 35 million acres or 66 percent of Utah's land area belongs to the federal government. The National Park Service is recommending 1.3 million acres for wilderness; the Forest Service has identified 2.9 million acres as "potential "poten-tial wilderness"; and it is predicted that the Bureau of Land Management mayiden-tify mayiden-tify as much as 11.5 million mil-lion acres as potential wilderness, wil-derness, bringing the total to almost 16 million acres or 30 percent of the State. The bill would divest the federal government of the majority of its public land holdings in the West and give ownership and control over to the states. It would affect the Bureau of Land Management Manage-ment and Forest Service holdings. It would not affect af-fect any established National Parks or Wilderness Areas, nor any land acquired by the federal government which is necessary to the actual operation oper-ation of federal agencies or departments. |