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Now it's Utah's responsibility to help decide what's wild.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's "wild lands" reversal puts the Beehive State's focus back on a county-by-county wilderness debate that hatched a bill for Washington County in 2009.
San Juan County already was working on a bill to preserve some of its canyons and mesas while opening others to development. Piute and Emery counties are talking to congressional staffers about efforts there.
"Man, I'm glad to hear that," former San Juan County Commissioner Lynn Stevens said of Salazar's decision. "And I'll say cheers for Governor [Gary] Herbert."
Utah's governor has advocated the county-by-county effort and called the secretary's Wednesday announcement a win for that process.
Then-Sen. Bob Bennett's staff had led the initial effort in San Juan, but Stevens — who is leading the local effort at a wilderness bill — said the county huddled with staffers for Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, both R-Utah, last week and is pressing on.
Hatch spokesman Mark Eddington confirmed that the senator is interested in working with the three counties, but said none of the bills is ready. Commissioners for Piute and Emery counties did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has participated in discussions for a San Juan bill, though SUWA associate director Heidi McIntosh said it's unclear whether county officials will present maps for meaningful public involvement before pushing the bill to Congress.
Stevens said the county will release maps before finishing a proposed bill this year or next. He said SUWA continues to press for the long-proposed Red Rock Wilderness Act, which the county believes has too much wilderness.
There's no point in releasing maps before the county is ready, Stevens said. "It just opens up the target for a lot more criticism."
Uintah County, a top energy producer with no wilderness bill in the works, also celebrated Salazar's wild lands reversal. The BLM's Vernal office adopted a management plan in 2008 identifying 106,000 acres for protection of wilderness qualities, Commissioner Mike McKee said.
But planners had considered about 400,000 acres, and McKee said the wild lands policy threatened to reopen the issue for those areas and more.
"It's great that no lands will be designated as wild lands," McKee said, though he's not totally at ease about Salazar's intentions for those lands. "The devil's in the details."
McIntosh said the BLM still has authority to inventory wilderness-quality lands for future protection, and wilderness advocates expect that work to continue.