The governor's remarks sparked a round of applause at the breakfast meeting of the Outdoor Retailers convention, which the association holds twice a year in Salt Lake City.

"Your association wants the same thing I want: to protect Utah's lands," he said.

In his speech, Huntsman also said he simply wanted the opportunity for input under the American Antiquities Act of 1906, "as any governor would."

Interviewed afterward, Huntsman said battles involving that law "have been fought in the past, and there's not much we can do about that. What we can do is determine how these battles are fought in the future."

A friend-of-the-court brief filed Friday by the state Attorney General's Office appears to be the first step in an attempt to secure Utah's power in those disputes. On Jan. 18, the state had sent a request to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals asking to file the brief challenging the process used in the September 1996 creation of the 1.7-million acre monument by then-President Clinton.

The brief states that "[Utah] does not specifically challenge the creation or size of the monument at issue in this case," while simultaneously saying that "the district court misconstrued the act as giving the president non-reviewable discretion both to create a monument and to determine its size."

On Saturday at the downtown Marriott, Frank Hugelmeyer, president of the Outdoor Industry Association, issued a statement saying that the association "looks forward to working with Gov. Huntsman to protect and promote Utah's recreation destinations." But Hugelmeyer's statement also said the association "is greatly disappointed in the brief filed by the attorney general [on Friday] regarding the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument."

The Outdoor Retailers threatened to hold their convention elsewhere in 2003 after then-Gov. Mike Leavitt and Interior Secretary Gale Norton signed a "no more wilderness" settlement, freezing the state's wilderness study inventory at 3.2 million acres and taking another potential 6 million acres out of play.

If the convention went out of state, the economic blow would be significant. The retailers' meetings bring more than 35,000 visitors and $32 million to Utah annually. A contract signed last year promises to keep the convention here through 2009.

The state withdrew from a lawsuit in 1998 it had joined with the Mountain States Legal Foundation that challenged the creation of Grand Staircase. In return, Utah gained $50 million for giving up School Institution and Trust Land parcels inside the monument.

Andy Munter, 51, who owns Backwoods Mountain Sports in Ketchum, Idaho, said after the governor spoke that he would support holding the convention "somewhere else if Utah didn't support resource protection."

"I do worry a little about [Huntsman's] emphasis on numbers [of tourists] without an emphasis on resource protection, because it's also a very fragile environment."

Huntsman told the crowd that his goal was to bring an additional 5 million visitors a year to Utah. That would be on top of the annual 17 million who already visit the state. Boosting tourism could mean another "$1.5 billion for the bottom line," the governor said, "to pay the bills" for projected growth during the next 10 years.

To achieve that vision, his administration has requested $10 million from the Legislature to embark on a marketing campaign that would brand Utah a worthy destination that boasts "some of the most extraordinary land on the planet," Huntsman said.

Spencer Bleadorn, 21, a Utah State University student who works at the school's outdoor equipment rental shop, agreed with the governor's plan.

"He's got a great idea for Utah," said the Milwaukee native. "The landscape, the variety of outdoor activities - those are the things that brought me out here. We're gonna market this and bring more people here."

Erin Sovick, 26, who works with the Colorado-based nonprofit Big City Mountaineers - which takes inner-city youths on backpacking trips - praised Huntsman for talking about "preserving the outdoors."

"That's what really matters to us," she said. "That's what we want to show the kids."

mcronin@sltrib.com