Oppose the Bonneville Shoreline Trail Advancement Act (S. 4215 and HR 7626)

Your help is needed to ask your Representative and both U.S. Senators to oppose the Bonneville Trail bill that would shrink four Wildernesses in Utah.

The Bonneville Shoreline Trail Advancement Act (S. 4215 and HR 7626) has been introduced in Congress by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Rep. John Curtis (R-UT). This bill would delete a total of 334 acres from the Mount Olympus, Mount Naomi, Twin Peaks, and Lone Peak Wildernesses. All but Mount Naomi are along the Wasatch Front just east of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area in Utah. The purpose for shrinking these Wildernesses on the Wasatch Front is to develop a high-standard, multi-use trail open to mountain bikes. Mountain bikes seem to be the reason for removing part of the Mt. Naomi Wilderness near Logan as well. Because bicycling is not allowed in designated Wildernesses, mountain bike trail proponents want to excise these lands from the four designated Wildernesses to allow the development of the trail.

This bill would also add 334 acres to the Mount Olympus Wilderness, using lands that until recently belonged to the Boy Scouts of America, but which local wilderness activists have never identified as deserving wilderness designation.

The Bonneville Trail Bill should be opposed for the following reasons:

1. Wilderness designation is supposed to be permanent.  Just because the metropolitan area’s growth has reached the wilderness boundaries is no reason to push the boundaries back to accommodate uses incompatible with wilderness designation.
2. This bill sets a bad precedent that could be used elsewhere across the nation to slice off parts of designated Wilderness when urban and other residential development creeps too close.
3. This bill is a new and worse version of an earlier land exchange bill supported by some Utah wilderness activists as part of a larger package that included significant new wilderness designations of 8,000 acres, while this bill only permits the land exchange and trail development, leaving out the rest of the package.

Please contact your Members of Congress and ask them to oppose this bill!