Interior Department Calls Halt to Wilderness Consideration
Pristine Colorado wildlands now at risk
April 14, 2003 (Denver, CO) - In a secretive, after-hours move April 11, the Interior Department rescinded over 25 years of standing policy on how the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) considers pristine lands for potential wilderness designation by Congress. While conservation groups are challenging the new policy as illegal, the Administration's move instantly puts at risk for extractive development and motorized use millions of acres of pristine wild country across the West including over 600,000 acres in western Colorado.
The decision was packaged into a court settlement with the State of Utah of a recently-resurrected 1996 lawsuit over BLM wilderness inventories in that State. Although the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals had thrown out nearly all of Utah's case several years ago, Utah recently re-filed its suit two weeks ago, which the Department of Interior quickly settled before conservation groups could intervene.
"This is devastating for wilderness in the Canyon Country of Western Colorado," said Jeff Widen, Associate Director of Colorado Environmental Coalition. "Secretary Norton had to hide this move late on a Friday night because she knew the American people would totally oppose it."
The Colorado Environmental Coalition, The Wilderness Society, and other conservation groups attempted to intervene in the State of Utah's lawsuit, but never got the chance. "Interior must have set a record for settling a court case with this one. It just shows that the Bush Administration's anti-environmental agenda, not the American people's wishes, is running the show," Widen added.
Instantly at risk are areas such as Vermillion Basin, a stunning landscape of multi-colored badlands, deep canyons, and ancient Indian writings, in far northwest Colorado. Although this area was overlooked in the BLM's original inventory in the early 1980s, the BLM redid its inventory and in 2001 agreed with citizens that Vermillion Basin possessed true wilderness character. The BLM was poised to update the area's management plan to consider grant more protection for the area when the new Administration stalled this public planning process.
"My family has traveled all over Vermillion Basin for the last 45 years. There are Indian archaeological sites that only we have seen," said former rancher Dick Randolph. "It's an excellent secluded area - and should stay that way. What the Interior Department has done is outrageous."
The Bureau of Land Management's operations are guided by the 1976 Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), which among other things, required BLM to undertake an inventory of its 262 million acres to see which areas possessed the qualities of official wilderness. BLM completed this first round of study by the early 1990's, and the identified lands were designated as Wilderness Study Areas (WSA), which must be managed to preserve their wilderness character until Congress makes a final designation.
BLM's early inventories were considered widely inadequate, however, and citizen groups across the West subsequently conducted their own wilderness inventories that identified thousands more acres of lands deserving wilderness protection. In places where BLM has taken a "second look" for wilderness character, it has often agreed with these citizen-proposed areas.
"The Bush Administration is saying that it will never again consider wilderness protection for any BLM lands. Not only is this in clear violation of the law, it simply isn't balanced or fair," stated Suzanne Jones, Assistant Regional Director for The Wilderness Society in Denver. "The BLM is constantly considering developing additional lands for oil and gas production, yet is now saying 'no' to any more protection for wilderness, and the outstanding wildlife and backcountry recreation values it provides."
The authority for taking a second look at wilderness values is based on another FLPMA requirement that BLM maintain " . . . on a continuing basis an inventory of all public lands and their resource and other values (including but not limited to, outdoor recreation and scenic values), giving priority to areas of critical environmental concern." BLM conducts this continuing inventory, for example, when new information is gathered on biological or resource values in an area, or when citizens document the wilderness character of an area that the agency previously said wasn't wilderness quality.
Colorado citizens have in recent years spent hundreds of days hiking and documenting wilderness character for numerous undeveloped areas across the State. In addition to 801,000 acres of Wilderness Study Areas originally designated by the BLM, citizen groups have identified another 800,000 acres that qualify for protection, including many places that the Colorado BLM has since agreed have wilderness values. These lands include such wild areas as Vermillion Basin; Bangs Canyon, south of Grand Junction near the Gunnison River; and South Shale Ridge, near Debeque; and the stunning Roan Plateau, north of Rifle. But the Bush Administration is now arguing that it will never take another look at protecting wilderness-quality BLM lands again, in clear violation of FLPMA.
The Colorado State BLM office has utilized its own wilderness review policy embodying this second look approach since 1996, in an agreement brokered by then-Rep. David Skaggs and BLM State Director Don Glaser. Utilized by every BLM State Director for the past seven years, the Colorado policy worked so well that it was used as the basis for BLM's National Wilderness Handbook, adopted in 2000, that the Bush Administration just rescinded.
"I sincerely hope that all Coloradoans, who enjoy our wild places because they are havens for wildlife and provide unbelievable recreation and challenge, will get on the phone to the White House to express their disgust at this senseless sacrifice of wildlands," said Vera Smith, Conservation Director of the Colorado Mountain Club.
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