A plan for roadless lands

Proponents of wilderness in Utah's redrock desert country have been seeking 9.1 million acres, and now proponents of wilderness in Utah's high country are adding another 3.3 million acres to the total.

Utah Environmental Congress, a grass-roots environmental group, is to unveil today an ambitious and comprehensive initiative to protect 37 percent of "roadless" or undeveloped areas in national forest lands in Utah as wilderness.

The initiative marks one of the most significant land-preservation undertakings in the country, said UEC executive director Denise Boggs.

"This is the most comprehensive survey," Boggs said. "No one has done this level of detail."

She hopes the work pays off with a statewide national forest bill in Congress. She has yet to garner any interest with Utah's congressional delegation to sponsor legislation but is hopeful she can entice a Western lawmaker to carry the bill.

Besides passage of a wilderness bill, she hopes the Forest Service managing the six national forests in Utah will take the plan to heart and close some roads and trails to improve wildlife habitat and water quality.

"Everything has been documented and easy for them to use," Boggs noted.

Forest Service officials have yet to see the proposal, which was mailed to them last week.

"We'll review it, of course," said Daniel Jiron, spokesman for the Ogden-based Intermountain regional forester. "Our process for doing recommendations on wilderness is done through the forest planning process. We wouldn't use just UEC but a combination of many people commenting on a plan. Getting a wilderness recommendation is a complex task."

The Wasatch-Cache National Forest has recommended that Congress add 73,500 acres of new wilderness, including 38,000 acres along Mirror Lake Highway that would be left open to snowmobiling until Congress acts.

By comparison, UEC proposes roughly 352,000 acres of wilderness in the Wasatch-Cache.

Boggs has been working on the inventory since she founded UEC five years ago. In developing the wilderness proposal, UEC followed national Forest Service standards. It involved a survey of 5.2 million acres of roadless lands in Utah — almost two-thirds of the national forest land in the state. UEC then reviewed timber sales and water rights and took extensive photographs to support its proposal to preserve 3.3 million acres of wilderness lands.

The group doesn't suggest that all roadless areas are deserving of wilderness protection. Roadless area designation is off-limits to commercial development, whereas wilderness designation would impose strict restrictions such as bans on motorized traffic like off-road vehicles and even mountain bikes.

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