The related questions of whether and how much BLM land should be set aside as wilderness in Utah have undergone extensive examination throughout Utah’s History since the early 80’s. The issue has received untold work, debate and controversy. Only Congress, however, can legislatively designate a wilderness area but obviously Utah’s elected officials and citizenry have a great deal to say about the issue.

In 1991 the BLM submitted a report to Congress that recommended a final Utah wilderness designation of 1.9 million acres that met every wilderness classification requirement with little or no conflict. In January 1995, the state’s elected officials began soliciting public input on a final wilderness bill.

Fully appreciating the issue’s volatility, state and federal officials sought to provide the citizenry ample opportunity for comment.

The 1995 wilderness proposal was a culmination of many years of work, millions of dollars, and countless man hours invested in trying to reach a compromise on the wilderness issue. The wilderness proposal came about several years after the Bureau of Land Management wilderness area inventory. In 1991 the BLM found that 3,258,250 acres of land met the minimum criteria for Wilderness Study Area designation and further recommended that 1,958,339 acres of that be designated as Wilderness.

From the start of the wilderness designation process there were deeply conflicting ideas and groups that all had a stake in the outcome of the wilderness bill. Local counties and residents had strong reservations against the proposed wilderness while environmental groups and urban residents generally strongly favored the wilderness designation. There were substantial differences in Utah and nationally as to what the public opinion really was. Several public opinion polls were conducted both by environmental groups and local counties and interests. The results of the polls consistently showed what was beneficial to them, allowing each group to claim they had the public support.

The history of wilderness in Utah shows that it is a very divisive issue with no simple resolution. During the 1995 Wilderness proposal the Governors office took on the role of a mediator, trying to build consensus among the competing parties. The major concerns that were put forward by both parties dealt with acreage numbers, right-of-ways, buffer zones, release language, economic development, and school trust lands. In general local counties favored as little wilderness as possible while environmental groups stood firmly behind their proposal of 5.7 million acres. One of the most contested issues was determining who controlled roads and right-of-ways within the proposed wilderness areas. While there were few existing right-of-ways, concern from local officials was about using them for future economic development that might be hindered by wilderness designation in their respective counties. Local officials also had reservations about creating buffer zones surrounding the wilderness, areas that were also under protection, though not as strict of guidelines as those governing the wilderness areas. Release language was another hot issue concerning wilderness. The difficulty facing authors of the bill was trying to negotiate between hard release, and soft release language concerning lands surrounding the wilderness areas. The final major controversy surrounding the designation of wilderness was the School Trust Lands. The Trust lands are managed to bring the most benefit to Utah’s public schools. These lands are arranged in a checkerboard pattern across the state, including inside wilderness areas. The solution that was sought to end the debate over the Trust lands was to create a land swap for other federal land throughout the state.

In an effort to make the process fair and open, numerous public meetings and hearings were held throughout the state. Approximately forty public hearings were held throughout Utah, including five regional public hearings and two additional meetings in Salt Lake City and Provo. Moreover, the governor’s office received over 3,030 written responses to the wilderness issue. From the public testimony of 551 people, 457 individuals indicated support for wilderness designation whereas 94 were in opposition. Roughly 43 percent supported 5.7 million acres of wilderness proposed by H.R. 1500, 3 percent supported Representative Orton’s proposal of approximately 1.2 million acres, 3 percent supported the Utah Wilderness Associations proposal of roughly 3 million acres, 4 percent supported rural county recommendations of little more than 1 million acres, and 18 percent, though supporting wilderness, did not designate a specific proposal or recommend a number of acres to be designated. Approximately 29 percent of the comments received favored no wilderness designation.

The tone that each meeting took seemed to depend on the location it was held. There was strong support for the wilderness designation in meetings held in urban areas, while the wilderness was strongly opposed in many meetings held in rural areas.

Many participants in the project were hopeful that the legislation would pass because of the level of compromise incorporated into it. The proposed legislation would encompass 1.8 million acres into the Wilderness system, as well as allow the state to control fish and game management in the wilderness areas and maintain control of water rights for the wilderness area. While the proposed legislation did not fully satisfy either extreme, it was the best compromise that had been made after 17 years of planning and negotiations.

The bill was put before the 104^th Congress and was met with heavy resistance from environmental groups. While the bill ultimately ended up failing, many of the places proposed to be designated as wilderness areas have remained wilderness study areas under similar protection.

In short, public comment and opinion polls indicated that there was great divisiveness over how much wilderness should be designated in Utah. Most rural citizens, who lived where these lands are located, strongly opposed any federal regulation that might limit local access to and economic development of BLM lands. Yet many citizens in the state’s urban areas supported the federal designation of 5.7 million acres of BLM wilderness. By revealing these divisions, the public process had effectively blocked resolution of the wilderness debate.

The inability to reach consensus over the wilderness issue stems from differing convictions about the land and from the lack of a meaningful, conciliatory dialogue between the debate’s participants. Polarization and mistrust have intensified on Utah’s plateau as misconceptions spread concerning permissible uses in and around designated wilderness areas. Many of Utah’s plateau residents remained firmly convinced that designated wilderness would result in substantial job losses in their communities, particularly in those jobs tied to extractive industries. Moreover, these same people often assumed that once public lands had been designated as wilderness, all the economic benefits they offered would be forever lost.

On the other side of the wilderness debate are those who seem to have limited empathy for the concerns of rural Utahns. Most people who favored 5.7 million acres of wilderness do not live in communities surrounding proposed wilderness areas and were not in danger of suffering any direct economic consequences from expanded wilderness. The notion of protecting the wild and scenic lands they use for recreation and escape often took precedence over the economic considerations of Utah’s rural citizenry.

Additional Resources

The creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) was a process that was done behind closed doors, therefore there is little information available on the thoughts and processes that went on in creating the Monument before it was officially announced to the public on September 18, 1996. The only record that has been located starts just nine days before the Monument was announced, this comes from a speech by Governor Leavitt recounting his involvement in the designation of GSENM. The first anyone heard about the Monument was on September 9, 1996 in an article in the Washington Post saying that there was going to be a new national monument announced in the near future. Governor Leavitt placed a call to the Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt; Babbitt said that the Department of the Interior (DOI) was not involved and that he should call the White House. When Governor Leavitt called the White House he spoke to the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Marsha Hales, who said she had seen the story but did not know anything about it, and would get back to the Governor on how serious the proposal was. On September 11, 1996 Governor Leavitt heard back from Hales, where she reported that the “Monument was being discussed but ‘no decision had been made.’” Governor Leavitt asked for a meeting with either the President or his Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, which was confirmed for the next week. On September 13, 1996 the Governor’s office learned that a major environmental announcement was going to be made by President Clinton at Grand Canyon the following week. When calls were placed to the White House and DOI both insisted that the other was handling the Monument and to call them. Later that afternoon Secretary Babbitt called an emergency meeting for the next day, Saturday, adding to the sense of inevitability. On September 16, the governor traveled to Washington for his meeting with Mr. Panetta and spent the day making phone calls and having meetings with local officials. On Tuesday, September 17, 1996 the Governor, Brad Barber and Joanne Newman met with Mr. Panetta, Kathleen McGinty, Chair of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality; Marsha Hale, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, and another member of the White House staff were in the meeting. In the meeting Governor Leavitt focused on the states and local communities desire to protect the lands in that region but said that the way the new monument was being designed was the wrong way to go about it. The Governor also spoke about the School Trust Lands in the area, of which Mr. Panetta had never heard of. Mr. Panetta said that he had the responsibility of making a recommendation to the President that afternoon; he also said he would arrange to have the President call the Governor later that evening. On Wednesday, September 18, 1996 the President called the Governor at 1:58 a.m. The call lasted only thirty minutes, in which the Governor reviewed what his meeting with Mr. Panetta had covered. At the conclusion of the call the President asked that Governor Leavitt write him a memo detailing what they had gone over. At 4:00 a.m. Governor Leavitt faxed President Clinton a two page memo he had completed. The memo outlined several points that would allow the state and local governments to have a say in the planning and management of the monument. At 7:30 that morning Governor Leavitt spoke with Mr. Panetta who said he had read the memo and thought the suggestions in it had merit and would be discussing them with the President. Mr. Panetta called the Governor later that morning to tell him that the monument would be announced and the details regarding it. At 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, President Clinton announced the creation of GSENM from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, an area encompassing 1.7 million acres, the size of Rhode Island, Delaware, and Washington D.C. combined.

The Book Cliffs Conservation Initiative (BCCI) started in 1990 as collaboration between the BLM, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF). The goal of the project was to create an area that showcased multiple use management while rehabilitating riparian areas that had been damaged by over grazing, and rehabilitating the wildlife population in the Book Cliffs area, specifically increasing the local elk heard from 2,000 to 7,500. The total area involved, including private lands, was approximately 450,000 acres.

Within the targeted area there were four privately held ranches and their participation in the program was crucial to its success. The UDWR and TNC purchased the Graham Ranch which was 3,720 acres and had grazing preferences on 100,397 acres of federal and state land. The RMEF purchased the Cripple Cowboy ranch in 1994 to further consolidate the grazing rights in the region. A third ranch in the region that was for sale, was purchased by Oscar S. Wyatt to continue using as a cattle ranching operation. The fourth ranch in the area was owned by Bert DeLambert who indicated that while he did not want to sell his ranch, he was more than willing to work with all interested parties in achieving the goals of the initiative.

The process was moving along quiet smoothly and quickly until Wyatt filed a lawsuit claiming that the actions taken by the involved parties were illegal. In his suit he charged that the ultimate goal was not to restore the area, but to turn it into a game preserve with almost wilderness like characteristics. The lawsuit put the progress of the initiative on hold for a while until the case was eventually dismissed by Judge Dee Benson saying that Wyatt’s lawyers needed “to get beyond speculation and stealth and conspiracy theory.”

Even though the lawsuit was dismissed it opened the door for a considerable amount of local opposition to be raised. Before the lawsuit was filed there had not been any major objections to the initiative, though afterwards local residents and groups became quite vocally opposed to the initiative. Ultimately Wyatt never agreed to participate in the initiative, though the other 3 private ranches in the region were all participants in the project. The goals of the initiative have been put into place and the region has been managed as the project intended, with the exception of the Wyatt owned ranch and grazing permits.