Save the Utah Wilderness

It is a quiet land. Deep, delicately carved canyons twist through golden walls of sandstone. A tortoise hides in the shade of a Joshua tree. Listen closely and you can hear the sound of a stream trickling through the rocks, over polished pebbles, and into a pool of crystal water.

The wilderness of Southern Utah is one of America's most spectacular national treasures. But is is also one of our most threatened. If Congress passes pending legislation, much of this land will be opened to development, stripped for coal and bulldozed for mining. This pristine wilderness will become a desert wasteland.

Legislation introduced in Congress by Utah's Republican delegation--H.R. 1745 (Rep. Hansen) and S. 884 (Sen. Orrin Hatch and Sen. Bennett)--would take the 22 million acres of public land in Utah currently administered by the Bureau of Land Management and allow 20.2 million acres to be drilled, mined, dammed and cleared.

Anyone who has been to southern Utah knows the unique beauty of the land. Millions of years of wind and running water have carved deep canyons in the soft sandstone--from thin "slot" canyons 10 feet wide but more than 1,000 feet high, to the magnificent Grand Canyon. Anasazi Indian ruins hide in the sandstone depths. Many species of endangered wildlife live in this wilderness. When the sun sets, the mesas glow fuchsia, gold, violet.

This is all irreplaceable. This will all be lost.

Worse, the implications of the Hatch-Hansen bill extend beyond the irreversible harm to the redrock wilderness. First, the bill would cripple the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964, the law which is the foundation of all of our nation's protected wilderness areas. So-called "hard release" language specifies that this land can never receive wilderness designation, even if future generations wish to preserve it. Second, the passage of the Hatch-Hansen bill would establish a precedent for similar legislation which would open public lands across the nation. This is not just a regional issue.

In addition to the irreversible environmental consequences, the Hatch-Hansen bill threatens to damage Utah's economy. On one hand, the mining sector employs only about one percent of Utah's work force, a number which is expected to decline even if this legislation is passed. The economic viability of mineral reserves in the desert wilderness is dubious due to huge extraction costs. On the other hand, the tourism industry has increased 42 percent in the past 15 years, with earnings rising 62 percent. Furthermore, current mining plans will result in 92-foot long double trailer trucks rumbling through Southern Utah every five minutes, 24 hours per day. And local companies will scarcely benefit. Andalex, the most likely corporation to mine this land, is Dutch.

It is no mystery, therefore, that more than 70 percent of Utah citizens oppose the current legislation.

Why, then, has the Utah delegation proposed such a bill? A glance at the Federal Elections Commission's records on campaign contributions is insightful. Over 30 oil and mining organizations are key political action committee donors to the campaigns of the Utah delegation.

The response to this legislation has been vigorous. Editorials opposing the legislation have appeared in almost all major national newspapers. The New York Times ran a front page story calling it "the biggest land fight now before Congress." In response to this anti-wilderness legislation, Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), has introduced H.R. 1500, a compromise proposal which preserves 5.7 million acres, and does not contain "hard release" language. Although this is still but a fraction of the land currently administered by the Bureau of Land Management, anything more ambitious is not feasible in today's political climate. Recognizing this, Hinchey's bill is a reasonable compromise proposal.

Here, at Harvard, we are over 2,000 miles from the Utah wilderness. But this doesn't mean we are powerless. Last Monday, at a talk co-sponsored by the Environmental Action Committee and the Harvard Wilderness Alliance, a packed room of over 60 students and community members attended a slide-show on the endangered redrock canyon country of Southern Utah given by Mr. Harvey Halpern of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Letter writing campaigns have generated more than 450 letters and will continue until we defeat this bill. Students can make their voices heard by writing or calling their congressional representatives at (202) 224-3121, voicing opposition to H.R. 1745 and S.884, and supporting H.R. 1500. Given that Congress doesn't expect many people other than Utahns to be concerned, a single call can yield surprising results.

Today marks the first trial. Senators Hatch and Bennett have incorporated S.884 within an "Omnibus Parks Bill" which contains other pieces of legislation, some of which are quite reasonable. Unfortunately, the Senate will have to vote on the entire package, and cannot reject just this legislation.

The vote is expected to be close.

Geography confines us to Cambridge, but the sound of a delicate sandstone arch crumbling beneath bulldozer tank-treads will reverberate across this nation. We cannot watch. We must react.

The desert is silent, but we have a voice.

Daniel P. Mason is founder and president of the Harvard Wilderness Alliance.