Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a wilderness preservation organization in the United States based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with field offices in Washington, D.C. and Moab, Utah. The organization formed in 1983 and is a partner in the Utah Wilderness Coalition, a coalition of organizations nationwide that support federal wilderness designation for deserving public lands in Utah.

Campaigns

The primary campaign of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is to build public support for America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, which was first introduced in Congress in 1989 by Utah Congressman Wayne Owens. The bill has been reintroduced in every session of Congress since. In 1997 the first companion bill was introduced in the United States Senate by Dick Durbin. On October 1, 2009, the bill was discussed in a legislative hearing before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.[1]

In 2011, SUWA began a public campaign urging President Obama to use his authority under the Antiquities Act to designate Greater Canyonlands (the 1.4 million acres of BLM land surrounding Canyonlands National Park) as a new national monument.[2] By the end of 2013, the campaign for a Greater Canyonlands National Monument was supported by other conservation groups including the Sierra Club, the Grand Canyon Trust, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Great Old Broads for Wilderness.

SUWA also works through the courts to protect areas in Utah that qualify as Wilderness under the federal Wilderness Act of 1964 from uses which would cause these areas to be disqualified from Wilderness consideration.[3] Such uses include off-road vehicle use, oil and gas development, and mining.[3][4]

Notable events

SUWA participated extensively in the creation of the Cedar Mountain Wilderness. This approximately 100,000-acre wilderness area is located roughly fifty miles west of Salt Lake City and was established in January 2006.[5]

SUWA also participated in the Washington County land bill, which designated approximately 256,000 acres of wilderness in southwestern Utah when it passed in 2009. Originally introduced by Senator Bob Bennet in 2006, early versions of the Washington County land bill failed to pass in two congresses due to opposition from SUWA and the Utah Wilderness Coalition.[6]

On May 8, 2012, SUWA and Anadarko Petroleum Corporation announced an agreement concerning a proposed oil and gas development project in eastern Utah. Part of this agreement included a commitment from the company to avoid development in the proposed White River wilderness and a conservation easement on private lands purchased by the company. This announcement came as part of a signing ceremony for the project attended by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.[7]

On November 4, 2013, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to minimize the impacts of motorized use on the land and its resources and to inventory archaeological sites when the BLM issued its Richfield Resource Management Plan in 2008. The Richfield plan covers 2.1 million acres in Sevier, Garfield, Wayne and Piute counties.[8]

On April 10, 2018, U.S. 7th District Judge Lyle Anderson ruled to DISMISS SUWA’s complaint in SUWA vs. San Juan County Commission. The Judge went further, questioning the propriety of SUWA’s filing as a mechanism of “intimidation” directed at San Juan County Commission or others, and were directed to file a memorandum addressing this with the Court by May 1.[9]

References

  1. ↑ H.R. 86, H.R. 118, H.R. 1925, H.R. 2689, H.R. 2781 & H.R. 2888: Legislative Hearing before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands of the Committee on Natural Resources U.S. House of Representatives. 111th Cong., 1st Sess. (2009). Hearing Report.
  2. ↑ "Outdoor retailers asking Obama for national monument". Sltrib.com. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  3. 1 2 "U.S. Public Lands Conservation - Pew Trusts". Leaveitwild.org. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  4. ↑ "Forest Service Management of the Wilderness Resource and Activities within Wilderness". Wilderness.net. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  5. ↑ "Bureau of Land Management, Wilderness Areas, Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area (Mar. 4, 2011)". Blm.gov. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  6. ↑ "Scott Groene on the Washington County land bill". Hcn.org. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  7. ↑ Brandon Loomis, “Salazar Lauds Utah Drilling Deal - One Enviros and Industry Back,” Salt Lake Tribune (May 8, 2012).
  8. ↑ "Court strikes down BLM travel plan". Archive.sltrib.com. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
  9. ↑ "7TH DISTRICT COURT- MONTICELLO SAN JUAN COUNTY, STATE OF UTAH : SOUTHERN UTAH WILDERNESS ALLIA, : RULING" (PDF). April 3, 2018. Retrieved 12 April 2018.
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