The Bureau of Land Management has offered gas and oil leases for auction near all of these recreational and cultural sites in the past 18 months, but eventually withdrew a number of them. The BLM is to make a decision today on whether to offer up a pair of parcels that could be seen from Canyonlands National Park. Environmentalists and the National Park Service are taking aim at the proposal.

The parcels are just east of the Needles District of the park in the Hatch Point and Lockhart Basin areas. The BLM originally proposed four parcels for sale, some of which include the canyon rims and are visible from the park. The Park Service requested all four be withdrawn; the BLM removed two.

“For the BLM to put these leases up for sale outside Canyonlands when the Park Service has said 'please don't do this' makes no sense. Nor does pulling two parcels the Park Service requested and leaving the other two,” Steve Bloch, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, said Friday. “I have no idea how they come to these decisions.”

As they have in the past, BLM officials said protests are still being considered, and no final determination will be made on the two controversial proposals until today.

“During this period we're going back and forth with people who are commenting on it, and obviously, consultation with our sister agencies is a big part of that,” said Don Banks, the BLM's state chief of external affairs.

“It's a multilayered process. The bottom line is, we're not quite there yet.”

In a May 13 letter to the BLM, Anthony Schetzsle, superintendent for the Southeast Utah Group of the National Park Service asked the agency to remove all four parcels from the auction lists because “these parcels contribute to the exceptional landscape as viewed from the rims on BLM lands and as viewed from scenic overlooks within Canyonlands National Park.”

Schetzsle requested the BLM defer making a final decision on the parcels “until this inconsistency with resource allocation decisions . . . can be addressed in the [land-use] planning process.”

Other critics say the BLM could potentially harm the state's recreation-based economy if the decision to lease the two parcels stands.

“If Utah wants to be a world class adventure destination, we must protect our public lands. This means we're going to have to make choices,” Ashley Korenblat, a Moab-based bicycle outfitter and a member of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s outdoor recreation task force, said in a statement.

“If we compromise this backcountry experience by destroying the viewshed with man-made objects, we'll have killed the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg.”

Bloch, meanwhile, wonders why the BLM puts such controversial parcels up for auction when they often wind up withdrawing them.

“Presumably,” he said, “a lot of detailed planning went into this decision.”

jbaird@sltrib.com