You Can Help Save An American Icon:  Utah ’s Red Rock Canyonlands

 

The red rock canyonlands of southern Utah is one of our nation's most magnificent wild landscapes.  It is an area dominated by towering buttes and red sandstone plateaus where the great Colorado and Green Rivers have sliced deep, winding canyons.  Seasonal streams have cut slot canyons so narrow you can touch both side with outstretched arms. 

This was the last place in the lower 48 states to be mapped and it remains a remote area where the human imprint on nature is at a minimum – the largest unprotected network of wild lands outside of Alaska .  If you’ve been there, you know the vast landscapes and ancient Native American cultural sites feel like a connection to eternity.  

The land is a layer-cake sedimentary geology, where ancient sand dunes form massive cliffs and domes that range starkly in color, from white to deep, brick red. Here, the great Colorado and Green Rivers have sliced deep, broad canyons through the yielding sandstone. Ephemeral streams have cut slot canyons so narrow you can touch both sides with outstretched arms.

Unfortunately leftover policies from the Bush administration still allow illegal and inappropriate use of ORVs and efforts to extract the minimal amounts of oil and gas or the potentially larger amounts of oil shale may yet cause extensive damage.  The U.S. Geological Survey has cited the dust caused by off-road vehicle activity and developments associated with resource extraction as a key factor complicating the damage caused by climate change to the southwest’s dwindling water supply.  The Obama administration needs to stand and deliver on the opportunity to reverse President Bush’s “No More Wilderness” policy which precludes the Bureau of Land Management from increasing wilderness protection in Utah and across the country.

Congress also has the means to take action.  " America 's Red Rock Wilderness Act" has been re-introduced into Congress in the Senate (S.799) by Richard Durbin of Illinois and in the House (HR 1925) by Maurice Hinchey of New York and would protect 9.4 million acres of wild lands in southern and western Utah .  A small portion of these lands was recently protected by the “Omnibus Public Lands Bill” which passed Congress last January.  It is time to finish the job.

Contact your Congressman and ask her/him to cosponsor “America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act.” For more information contact the Sierra Club’s National Utah Wilderness Team via Bob Jordan at bobjord@earthlink.net or Clayton Daughenbaugh at claytonhd@xmission.com ).

You can also help by sending a letter to the Interior Department asking them to revoke President Bush’s “No More Wilderness” policy which prevents the Bureau of Land Management from providing additional wilderness protection for the wild lands under its jurisdiction.  Send your letters to:  Deputy Secretary David Hayes; U.S. Dept. of the Interior; 1849 ‘C’ St., NW; Washington , DC 20240 .