(2/2/99)
Could an end be in sight for Utah's War of the Wilds?
After 15 years of bitter controversy, the Governor thinks he has a way to
settle the fight over wilderness.
He has shaken hands with a key player on the other side, Interior Secretary
Bruce Babbit. Environment Specialist John Hollenhorst reports.
They did not agree on how many acres to protect. Not by a long shot.
But the Governor says the whole point is to get away from the battle over
numbers.
They've agreed on a process.
And the Governor thinks it could get the debate off dead center.
The center has been impossible to find. Serious wilderness protection
proposals have ranged from a million acres to nearly 9 million.
Now the Governor, just back from Washington, has struck a deal with Utah's
Congressional delegation and Babbitt to get legislation moving by early spring.
The Governor says, "That's our goal here is to quit talking about it and start
making wilderness."
The first bill would address only the West Desert, about half the problem
but perhaps the easiest half. The Governor says there's alread agreement on 85
percent of the land that should be protected.
The discussion then moves to the hard part, the rugged red-rock and
scenic canyon country of Central and Southern Utah.
The governor wants to move incrementally, forging agreements a step at a
time. The parties agreed to one more wilderness inventory.
"The bottom line is, we're going to go through the state an acre at a time,
using technology, satellite technology, and on the ground discussion." he says,
"And we're going to figure out what constitutes wilderness and what does not."
Environmentalists have resisted the step-by-step approach, fearing that once
the easy agreements are made, the effort will run out of steam and leave key
areas unprotected. But this time they're not rejecting the Governor's gambit
out of hand.
Heidi McIntosh of the So. Utah Wilderness Alliance says, "We're skeptical
because of what's happened in the past. We've seen bad wilderness bills, one or
after the other coming from the delegation, getting shot down in congress.
We're willing to sit and listen though. We're willing to see if the governor
can change the dynamic here and come up with something that really does protect
wilderness."
It is politically significant that Secretary Babbitt is on board with the
Utah delegation.
But environmentalists say they're confident that if a bad bill emerges,
Babbit will jump ship, and wind up on their side.
