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Speak up for Wilderness in Utah's Canyon Country!

North Santa Teresa Wilderness, Arizona by BLM

Utah’s canyon country deserves real Wilderness protection! Weigh in on management plans for new Wildernesses and Wild Rivers in the San Rafael Swell, Desolation Canyon, and Labyrinth Canyon

As part of the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act in 2019, Congress designated 17 new Wildernesses (totaling 663,000 acres) in eastern and southeastern Utah, and three Wild and Scenic segments on the Green River.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has kicked off its planning process to determine how these areas will be administered and is asking for public input. These areas represent some of the most spectacular of Utah’s famed Canyon Country, and we need your voice to make sure they are administered in a way that protects their wild character.

Please speak up by January 7, 2022, and make your voice heard!

The Desolation Canyon and Turtle Canyon Wildernesses, surrounding Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) and other adjoining roadless public and Tribal lands in the Book Cliffs constitute a million-acre wild region with superlative wildlife and other wilderness values. Desolation Canyon includes an 80-mile stretch of the wild Green River, which has carved a 5,000-ft gorge providing one of the wildest and most remote river running experiences in the western U.S. Rocky Mountain bighorn, bison, black bear, cougar, elk, mule deer, and at least three endangered fishes all call these Wildernesses home.

The San Rafael Swell has often been touted as Utah’s next national park. It includes 14 new Wildernesses displaying spectacular gorges carved by the San Rafael River and Muddy Creek, and the 75-mile-long San Rafael Reef, a huge, upturned sandstone buttress incised by an array of amazing narrow canyons. To the east lies the Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness, a sprawling benchland of pinyon-juniper and sagebrush, cut by numerous side canyons dropping into the still waters of Labyrinth Canyon itself, where the Green River has carved a deep path through towering buttes and colorful slickrock formations.

Please tell the BLM that you want the new plans to prioritize protecting the areas’ wilderness character, to keep them wild and undeveloped, and to emphasize their value for wildlife and solitude for human visitors.

Unfortunately and tragically, the boundaries drawn when these Wildernesses were designated included numerous “cherrystems,” narrow corridors of non-wilderness lands that if left open to vehicles will severely fragment the Wildernesses, reduce their value to wildlife, and limit opportunities for a true wilderness experience. Many of these cherrystems are little more than wash bottoms or routes created solely by the passage of an occasional vehicle that remain as scars upon the desert landscape. BLM should close these routes to all motorized and mechanized vehicle use in their plans.

Similarly, BLM needs to ban motorboats on the Green River through Desolation and Labyrinth Canyon. The vast majority of rafting, kayaking, and canoeing parties don’t use motors, and the few that do cause an outsized impact on those seeking an increasingly rare non-motorized experience. BLM should also ban aircraft landing in the Wildernesses and Wild River corridors. There were virtually none when the Wilderness Study Areas were established 30 years ago, but recreational pilots are pushing to reestablish long-abandoned strips throughout the San Rafael country.

You have the opportunity to help shape the BLM’s management of these iconic landscapes so their wilderness, natural, cultural, scenic, wildlife and other values are protected from the impacts of motorized recreation and irresponsible development.

This “scoping” period is the first of several steps in the planning process, and it is the time when the BLM is most open to new information and ideas for management of these areas over the next several decades. This is our chance to influence how this irreplaceable canyon country will be managed for generations to come.

Please speak up by January 7, 2022, and make your voice heard!

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Urge the BLM to protect world-class Wildernesses in Utah’s Canyon Country!

BLM—Price, UT Field Office

Subject: Scoping comments on Moab, Price, and Vernal Resource Management Plan Amendments

Message:

I'm providing these comments on BLM's proposals to amend its management plans to include direction for the 17 new Wildernesses and three Wild and Scenic River segments in the San Rafael and Desolation Canyon regions. I urge the BLM to prioritize protecting the areas’ wilderness character to keep them wild and undeveloped, and to emphasize their value for wildlife and solitude for human visitors. I request that the Bureau of Land Management: • Develop a plan that will protect these areas from recreation overuse. These areas, like much of the surrounding region, are at risk of being overrun by recreationists. BLM should not promote commercial recreation use in these Wildernesses, unless or until BLM can show that it can maintain security for wildlife and protect solitude for wilderness visitors. Research suggests group sizes of 10 or less will reduce site impacts and impacts to solitude. • Close the primitive “cherrystem” routes that dead-end inside Wilderness or that separate wilderness units. Specifically, close the cherrystem along Range Creek below its junction with Turtle Canyon, on Beckwith Plateau beyond the Price River, and the routes in North and South Forks of Coal Wash separating Sids Mountain Wilderness from Cold Wash and Eagle Mountains Wilderness. This area should be administered as one large Wilderness unit. Prohibit all motorized and mechanized travel on these routes. • Close backcountry airstrips within designated Wilderness areas and WSAs including at Mexican Mountain Wilderness and other areas on the San Rafael Swell. • Prohibit fixed, permanent climbing anchors in the designated Wildernesses. “Clean climbing” (the use of removable climbing protection) should be the rule in Wilderness. The 1964 Wilderness Act prohibits fixed anchors as a structure or installation. • Assess livestock grazing impacts on wildlife and recreation, and ensure it does not degrade these Wildernesses. BLM should permanently retire grazing permits in these Wildernesses if any grazing permits are waived back to BLM. Remove unneeded fencing, water troughs, or other grazing infrastructure, particularly in the Wildernesses where grazing permits were purchased and retired. The “temporary” bison fence in the Desolation Canyon Wilderness is an example of this infrastructure that needs to be removed. • Protect and enhance the designated Wild and Scenic Rivers by prohibiting the use of motors on the Green River where it flows through Desolation-Gray and Labyrinth canyons. Prohibit the development of new facilities within the viewsheds of the Labyrinth Canyon and Desolation Canyon Wild and Scenic River segments. Thank you for this opportunity to comment and help shape the vision of how this irreplaceable canyon country should be managed for generations to come.

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Speak up for Wilderness in Utah's Canyon Country!

Urge the BLM to protect world-class Wildernesses in Utah’s Canyon Country!

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