Online NewsHour: Debate on Preserving Utah's Wilderness -- March 15, 1996

AH, WILDERNESS

MARCH 15, 1996

TRANSCRIPT

Tom Bearden reports on a dispute about how much wilderness is enough. Next week, the Senate is expected to vote on legislation that would determine how much of Utah's land should be given the official designation of wilderness and preserved from development.

TOM BEARDEN: The view is simply astonishing--a thousand-foot deep canyon sliced through rock so red it's almost luminous. People from all over the world come to Southern Utah to gaze in wonder at what the Colorado River has done over the millennia. Some of them are equally astonished when they notice there is also a large potash mine in the bottom, right on the edge of Canyonlands National Park. In some ways, it's a vision of what two opposing viewpoints in Utah would like to see--land preserved in a pristine state versus developing some of it to extract natural resources. The Utah Congressional Delegation's Bill would designate 1.8 million acres. A bill supported by environmentalists would designate more than three times as much, 5.7 million acres. Terry Tempest Williams is a Salt Lake City author and environmentalist. She argues earnestly for the larger proposal.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS, Environmentalist: This is a landscape of the imagination. These are canyon walls that rise upward like praying hands. This is a landscape that reminds us of a bedrock democracy. It is what has always held us as Americans. And to let these lands go in the name of expediency, in the name of economic growth, when our very health and souls are stake would be a great mistake.
TOM BEARDEN: Philip Bimstein also supports the 5.7 million acre proposal, not for spiritual but for economic reasons. He's the mayor of Springdale, Utah, a small resort town near Zion National Park. Springdale is struggling to build more motel rooms.
MAYOR PHILIP BIMSTEIN, Springdale, Utah: I think that wilderness designation is crucial to the economic future of Utah in general, and because Springdale is a town that's situated right at the edge of the wilderness, is surrounded on all four sides by it, and we're trying to cultivate an image as a destination resort, wilderness designation enhances our quality of life for the residents that live here and it also, I think, adds to the future of our economy, which is already booming as a result of it.
TOM BEARDEN: But opponents of the environmentalist bill, like Louis Liston, say it's nonsense to think adding more wilderness would help the economy. A county commissioner in Garfield County, Liston says the real problem is the federal government already controls 98 percent of the land.
LOUISE LISTON, Garfield County Commissioner: In order for us to take care of the services that 3 million visitors demand, we have to do that on a tax base that 4,000 people give us on less than 2 percent of the land being private property. The tourists come in and they leave their garbage, they get lost, they get hurt, they require law enforcement, and we have to provide all of those services to them on a very constrained, limited budget.
TOM BEARDEN: Opponents of the 5.7 million acre bill say it would also utterly foreclose their economic future because wilderness designation would prevent the development of the area's rich natural resources and the jobs that go with it. Liston says the ridge behind her is a good example of what would be lost. It's called Fifty Mile Mountain, the Northern edge of an enormous plateau that extends into Northern Arizona. It's part of the area environmentalists want to see become wilderness. If it does, it would scuttle plans to build an underground coal mine. Roger Holland is a city councilman in the nearby town of Kanab. He thinks the mine would be much more valuable to his town than wilderness.
ROGER HOLLAND, City Councilman: It would be incredibly good for our economy. It would mean 900 jobs, good-paying jobs, almost twice what the average pay scale is in the state of Utah.
LOUIS LISTON: You have to have some type of an industry for the dads to work at so we can have the moms and the daughters and the sons run the service stations and motels and restaurants.
TOM BEARDEN: Many ranchers who have grazed cattle on the public lands for generations say they would also suffer, even though they would still be allowed to graze in any new wilderness areas. Hardy Redd says the reality is that today's cowboys drive pickups and tow their horses long distances to reach the range land. Wilderness areas prohibit motorized vehicles, making continued grazing there impractical.
HARDY REDD: My experience is that people who run livestock in wilderness areas say, yeah, they allow us to run the livestock, but they restrict us so much they make it uneconomic or make it very, very difficult to go in and repair a water system or haul salt in or maintain fences or things like that.
TOM BEARDEN: Ken Sleight runs a guest ranch right near one of Redd's ranges near Moab, Utah. He thinks those who oppose the environmentalists' bill are losing sight of the big picture. A former cattleman, himself, he now guides tourists on raft trips through Canyonlands National Park.
KEN SLEIGHT: This country belongs to the American people. It doesn't belong to the Hardy Redds or the other ranchers. It belongs to the American people. They are, they are using it. The utility of it, they're using it. We can't afford them to ruin it. I feel like we've got a lot of land here, but when you really look at it, most of it is despoiled already, and we've only got a few pockets of wilderness left, true wilderness. And I think we need to protect it.
TOM BEARDEN: But Redd says creating wilderness can do more harm than good and points to Canyonlands National Park as an example.
HARDY REDD: In 1964, 4,000 people visited this area. Now that it's designated a park, last year, 400,000 people visited the area. They have a much greater impact on the land. In fact, there is some argument that designating parks or designating wilderness has more adverse impact on the land than leaving it alone and leaving it undefined and not attracting people to it.
KEN SLEIGHT: People are coming in or without designation of wilderness. We've seen that already in the national parks, so designation of wilderness is not going to bring any more.
TOM BEARDEN: The two sides can't even agree on what wilderness is. The environmentalists say their 5.7 million acre proposal meets the guidelines established in the Wilderness Act--pristine, untrammeled by man, no structures or roads. Louise Liston says much of the land is far from pristine and accuses environmentalists of inflating the amount that qualifies and thereby perverting the Wilderness Act.
LOUISE LISTON: Wilderness is now being proposed by exception, and that means that it doesn't have to fit the criteria, and that's what the 5.7 million acre proposal is. We have hundreds of miles of roads. We have fences. We have water tanks. We have cabins. I mean, you know, they don't fit wilderness criteria.
TOM BEARDEN: Utah Congressman Jim Hansen says his 1.8 million acre bill would designate true wilderness and says it's backed up by a Bureau of Land Management Study.
REP. JAMES HANSEN, (R) Utah: The BLM spent $10 million in 15 years, and they came up with a figure finally of 1.95 [million acres]. The legislation that we've introduced pretty well tracks that at 1.8 [million acres], supported by the delegation, governor, both Houses of the state legislature, all of the county commissioners but one, and every elected official in the state of Utah.
TOM BEARDEN: But Jim Baca, who headed the BLM at the time and is now a consultant working under a Sierra Club grant, says the whole thing was political.
JIM BACA: I think they tried to veil it as a study that was done like any other study, but, in fact, of all the wilderness studies that have ever been done or probably ever will be done, it was the most political. The staff at BLM, including the person who ran the study for the BLM at that time in their wilderness unit, said that it was political and that they were forced to do a lot of things that were unscientific, that weren't supported by the facts.
TOM BEARDEN: Baca says it's Hansen who's trying to pervert the Act, because his bill contains so-called "hard release" language, an unprecedented provision requiring the BLM to release all the land adjacent to the new wilderness for immediate development, foreclosing future wilderness expansion.
JIM BACA: Hard release means that if you look at that acreage that was not considered for wilderness, you can never consider it for wilderness again. You cannot protect it for wilderness values. You cannot do anything to it. It's open to development, and you can never look at it again. I've always thought it was unconstitutional. I don't know how you can tie the hands of future Congresses.
TOM BEARDEN: Terry Tempest Williams hopes Congress will look at more than just jobs in reaching a decision.
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: Wilderness is like a combustible log. Say the word and it ignites. It's too easy to say it's us versus them, it's environmentalists versus ranchers. I think the issue that is really at hand is: Do we have the restraint, do we have the generosity of spirit, do we have the vision to grant these lands their own sovereignty, to extend our notion of community to include all life forms, plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and human beings?
TOM BEARDEN: Hardy Redd has another worry, that the years of arguing over dinner tables and in public meetings will have a permanent effect on the adversaries.
HARDY REDD: One of the virtues and one of the beauties of the West is not just the scenery. It's the good feelings that there are among people, the amiability, the kind of the more easy, easy- going tolerance that I sense in the West. One of the things the wilderness debate has done is, is chipped away at those good feelings and divided us into us and them. That's a tragedy.
TOM BEARDEN: While Congress considers both bills, Utah is bracing for another onslaught of tourists this Summer. Environmentalists say they want to make sure that what draws them here isn't destroyed. The people who live near those attractions say they want that took but they also want to be able to make a living. Ultimately, Congress will have to decide how much wilderness is enough.

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