Wilderness
The Deseret News ran an AP article on a wilderness case being argued before the 10th Circuit. Before I entered the legislature and completely revamped my practice (to avoid receiving legislatively appropriated money), I represented the Utah counties involved in this case. A few observations.
The Wilderness Act was passed in 1964. Moses wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and God decided that was long enough. The United States has now been wandering in the wilderness for more than 40 years; Congress should grant a similar reprieve.
If anyone truly wants to resolve the wilderness issue, ask your congressman or senators to get cracking. The agency study was completed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 1991. It's now time for Congress to act.
The case before the 10th Circuit is simply whether Congress meant 15 years when it said BLM had 15 years to conduct its study and present that study to Congress or whether Congress meant BLM could study the issue forever when Congress specified the 15-year period.
The wilderness inventory at issue was not an attempt to resolve the dispute. It was a hurried study (mostly consisting of sitting in a room drawing lines on maps) aimed at manufacturing wilderness. The goal was to quickly manufacture wilderness by ignoring or cherry-stemming out existing roads -- so that roadless areas large enough to meet the Act's requirement (5,000) acres could be found. All the other lofty considerations for wilderness, such as aesthetics and pristineness were largely ignored, as were the pragmatic considerations, such as manageability. It was a certain number of acres that mattered, like points on antlers, inches on a trout or any other trophy to be conquered and bagged.
There is an illusion that wilderness is disappearing. If environmental groups are to be believed, wilderness is spreading faster that kudzu. The Clinton administration's purpose in conducting the 1996 re-inventory (if we assume it was more than election-year pandering) was to prove that 5 million acres of wilderness existing on BLM lands in Utah, not the 1- to 3 million acres then on the table. Well, now, just 9 years later, the same environmental groups are arguing that 9 million acres of wilderness exist on BLM lands in Utah.
Remember, there are 20 million acres of BLM lands in Utah. Therefore, environmental activists argue that every other acre qualifies as wilderness. Obviously, this means that wilderness is no longer a superlative. It no longer typifies anything extraordinary. Rather, if every other acre is wilderness, wilderness simply means "middling" or "a little better than average." I'm not sure this is what Congress had in mind in 1964 when it unanimously passed the Wilderness Act.
UPDATE (01/14/04): According to the Rocky Mountain News, it looks like the 10th Circuit might have this one by the tail. The RMN's hyperbole, though, is (1) flat wrong (BLM said it was just doing a little old inventory, which wouldn't change management) and (2) sort of cute, in an alarmist, biased kind of way:
The agreement removed protections that kept the land off-limits to oil and gas development, as well as logging, mining and some recreational uses.
Right now, I'm sure the sound of chirping birds has been muted by the deafening roar of D9 Cats, chainsaws, and dynamite -- despite the fact that enviros and Bruce Babbitt's BLM thought the areas exquisitely pristine even though the areas lacked wilderness protection for thousands or billions of years, depending on which theory you subscribe to.
The Wilderness Act was passed in 1964. Moses wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and God decided that was long enough. The United States has now been wandering in the wilderness for more than 40 years; Congress should grant a similar reprieve.
If anyone truly wants to resolve the wilderness issue, ask your congressman or senators to get cracking. The agency study was completed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 1991. It's now time for Congress to act.
The case before the 10th Circuit is simply whether Congress meant 15 years when it said BLM had 15 years to conduct its study and present that study to Congress or whether Congress meant BLM could study the issue forever when Congress specified the 15-year period.
The wilderness inventory at issue was not an attempt to resolve the dispute. It was a hurried study (mostly consisting of sitting in a room drawing lines on maps) aimed at manufacturing wilderness. The goal was to quickly manufacture wilderness by ignoring or cherry-stemming out existing roads -- so that roadless areas large enough to meet the Act's requirement (5,000) acres could be found. All the other lofty considerations for wilderness, such as aesthetics and pristineness were largely ignored, as were the pragmatic considerations, such as manageability. It was a certain number of acres that mattered, like points on antlers, inches on a trout or any other trophy to be conquered and bagged.
There is an illusion that wilderness is disappearing. If environmental groups are to be believed, wilderness is spreading faster that kudzu. The Clinton administration's purpose in conducting the 1996 re-inventory (if we assume it was more than election-year pandering) was to prove that 5 million acres of wilderness existing on BLM lands in Utah, not the 1- to 3 million acres then on the table. Well, now, just 9 years later, the same environmental groups are arguing that 9 million acres of wilderness exist on BLM lands in Utah.
Remember, there are 20 million acres of BLM lands in Utah. Therefore, environmental activists argue that every other acre qualifies as wilderness. Obviously, this means that wilderness is no longer a superlative. It no longer typifies anything extraordinary. Rather, if every other acre is wilderness, wilderness simply means "middling" or "a little better than average." I'm not sure this is what Congress had in mind in 1964 when it unanimously passed the Wilderness Act.
UPDATE (01/14/04): According to the Rocky Mountain News, it looks like the 10th Circuit might have this one by the tail. The RMN's hyperbole, though, is (1) flat wrong (BLM said it was just doing a little old inventory, which wouldn't change management) and (2) sort of cute, in an alarmist, biased kind of way:
The agreement removed protections that kept the land off-limits to oil and gas development, as well as logging, mining and some recreational uses.
Right now, I'm sure the sound of chirping birds has been muted by the deafening roar of D9 Cats, chainsaws, and dynamite -- despite the fact that enviros and Bruce Babbitt's BLM thought the areas exquisitely pristine even though the areas lacked wilderness protection for thousands or billions of years, depending on which theory you subscribe to.
posted by steve u. at 1/10/2005
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