Advocates: Support growing for wilderness bill

As Congress prepares to hold its first hearing on the so-called "Red Rock bill," an environmental group released a poll Monday showing more Utahns support setting aside at least 9 million acres of wilderness in the state.

In a Dan Jones & Associates survey, commissioned by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, half the respondents said they would like to see that many Bureau of Land Management acres -- or more -- receive wilderness status. That's up from 37 percent in a similar but smaller 1999 poll.

The jump, according to SUWA executive director Scott Groene, shows that as Utahns learn more about wilderness, they increasingly want protection for scenic public lands.

"More people have made up their minds," Groene said. "And when that's happened, it's not that support for wilderness declines but actually remains the same, or increases a little."

The survey's release coincides with Thursday's hearing before a House subcommittee for America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, first sponsored by the late Rep. Wayne Owens, D-Utah, in 1989. The bill would designate 9.4 million BLM acres in Utah as wilderness.

The poll's timing raised suspicions with some county officials in southern Utah, where SUWA and other conservation groups have said they would like to work with local governments on land bills similar to the 2009 Washington County Growth and Conservation Act.

Two Utahns, Republican Sen. Bob Bennett and Democratic Rep. Jim

Matheson, sponsored that bipartisan bill, passed in January, designating 256,000 acres as wilderness and establishing Utah's first wild and scenic river. Since then, counties have looked to it as a model of collaboration and a way to exert local control over federal lands.

"Scott [Groene] has called me no less than a million times. And I've told Scott we're willing to look at a land-use bill that includes wilderness," San Juan County Commissioner Bruce Adams said. "We're upset with Scott for pushing the Red Rock Wilderness [bill].

"What's SUWA's agenda here? Do they want to be a partner?" Adams asked. "We're kind of suspicious."

Mark Ward, an attorney with the Utah Association of Counties, said the poll's single question "inaccurately sets up the responder to think, 'If you want protection, your only option is wilderness,' " Ward said. "That's a hijacking of reasonable debate."

SUWA is one of hundreds of organizations that have worked to get the Red Rock bill its first congressional hearing in 20 years. With zero support from Utah's congressional delegation, it's unlikely to go anywhere.