Letter to the editor: Wilderness designation in Emery County

By BONNIE P. KEELE Ferron

Editor,
The Wilderness bill has never been changed to read “substantially unnoticeable”. “Substantially unnoticeable” is a term wilderness advocates plucked out of the air because they couldn’t grab enough land under the real description of Wilderness which is 5,000 acres, untouched by man.
Had you banded together in the beginning, as some of the counties wanted, we would have had strength in numbers. Now, we are being picked off one by one, starting with the “weak sisters”.
Wilderness is a “no” culture. No resource development, no motorized access, no mechanized access.
There is oil shale in the Swell. There is technology being developed to extract it. I’m tired of sending our money to countries to buy what we have in our own country if we were allowed to use it. I’m tired of enviromental groups trying (and succeeding) to make this Nation a bedroom community to the world. Trying to make us a third world country that can’t take care of itself.
You tell us that when your bill goes to Washington, if you don’t like what’s happening, Bennett can pull it. That’s what Washington County told their people. By the time the wilderness advocates and enviromentalist’s got done with it, it was unrecognizable and too late.
The Black Ridge Wilderness Area was “created” to appease SUWA, 13,000 plus acres.
What will you “create”? Johnson’s Heritage Area? That the BLM can control under the National Landscape Conservation System to wit: “to conserve, protect, and restore nationally significant landscapes that have outstanding cultural, ecological and scientific values” this already passed in the Omnibus Bill. I’ll bet SUWA is salivating. Add this to Wilderness, ACEC’s, ISE’s, ABC’s (all the other letters in the alphabet).
Or maybe you’d like a couple of National Conservation Areas that are managed like Wilderness, maybe with one dead-end road.
Let’s address this great dream of tourism-the majority of tourists that come to this county are motorized or mechanized recreationists. More money is brought into this county by motorized and mechanized recreation than on foot. Whether they are hunting, fishing, looking at the country or riding trails, if they can’t drive, they’re not coming.
Years ago when the WSA process first started, past commissioners told us they didn’t fight because they might lose. Well, we lost anyway. Now you don’t fight because you’re superior. You have it under control. You hired someone to help, like he helped Washington County. You got an award from the BLM for “cooperation”.
By the way, five days after the Washington County bill passed, the Red Rock Wilderness Bill was submitted again and Washington County was still in it. Well duh. So much for “jumping out ahead”. If Bennett wants to sponsor another Wilderness Bill, let him sponsor one getting rid of these illegal WSAs.