Big Wilderness is Knocking at our Door

November 8, 2013

The following is re-published with permission.

When congress enacted the original Wilderness legislation in 1964, it seemed, like all other impending environmental bills, a pretty good idea. The act envisioned about 15 million acres of already highly restricted land, containing no roads or other impacts of man, would ultimately be designated.  

But over the years the political environmentalists and their friends in the judiciary mutilated this well intentioned law until it became the Frankenstein monster, intent on devouring every scenic acre in its path. Instead of being  the last resort classification for the most rare and exemplary natural landscapes, Wilderness is now the default designation for all public lands, having thus far consumed over 150 million acres with no end in sight.

Luckily we in Utah have been substantially spared the onslaught of this BLM land grabbing juggernaut except for Washington County which was sacrificed to the Earth Goddess Gaia by the closet democrat Bob Bennett, who revealed his true colors by taking a job with the Wilderness Society shortly after being booted out by an unusually perceptive Republican convention.

Sadly, we are again in great danger of massive Wilderness mediated, not by the political environmentalists as we might expect, but rather by lobbyists paid for by the taxpayers of Emery County! They have produced a bill that they claim must be passed in all possible haste, calling for a whopping 150,000 acres in excess of the long established and exorbitantly large Wilderness Study Areas. 

This is wrong on so many levels.   Here are just a few examples of why this bill must never see the light of day. First, most of the land in question does not fit the requirements of the 1964 law. It is not pristine and untrammeled by man and contains many hundreds of miles of roads. There were thousands of mines with bull dozers crawling all over the place in the 50’s and 60’s.  Because roads are incompatible with Wilderness, The BLM’s publications have gone to incredible linguistic contortions to avoid the word “road”, but their “doublespeak” doesn’t change the reality on the ground or make the roads vanish.

Second, ALL future economic development will be forever outlawed.  The inhabitants of Emery County and all other areas subject to Wilderness Designation will become the servants and porters for politically correct eco-tourists, which will become the only remaining economic activity. Grazing will be banned (check the GSENM if you have any doubt of this), and meanwhile our revered President Obama has made no secret of killing coal as an energy resource.  No new mining, oil exploration, or non eco- tourism development will be allowed.  The people of “the Wilderness Lands will become trespassers on their own land; outcasts from the King’s Forest Wilderness will create.

Third, Wilderness Designation is unconstitutional and illegally discriminatory. It violates the First Amendment by implementing religious gospels through the force of law. If you have any doubt as to the religious nature of the Environmental movement and their beloved Wilderness, just check their writings and their reverence to Earth Goddess Gaia. In addition, Wilderness bans all motorized and mechanized traffic, even on existing roads, thereby shutting out every American with a mobility disability, which includes most of our elderly people and other protected populations. It’s quite odd that at a time of supreme political correctness, where the rights of every minority are given almost holy status, the rights of so many other good people are dismissed without apology or even notice. Fortunately, there are a number of powerful laws and constitutional protections that, if finally invoked, will shatter the Wilderness paradigm.

Forth, the fallacious argument propelling the current Wilderness Crusade proclaims that our beloved President Obama will act if we don’t designate immediately.  Well, this is analogous to committing suicide in order to avoid the possibility of being murdered. Very effective but not very smart! President Obama hates Utah and will do whatever pleases the political environmentalists independent of our action or inaction. The tragedy here is that the Republicans didn’t fix the Antiquities Act when they had the chance.  Much of the blame goes to them (and especially to Orrin Hatch) if President Obama creates a National Monument, which, it should be noted, is not nearly as bad as Wilderness.  National Monuments can be managed for multiple use and are reversible, neither of which applies to Wilderness.

The people of Utah must to stand up and say NO to this insane sellout to the political environmentalists.  Remember, they will take what you give them now and soon come back for the rest.   There is no compromise possible with them, ever. There is zero benefit to us in Wilderness designation, which shifts total control of our public land to Washington D.C., where powerful interests inimical to Utah will always be in control.  The only defensible position is NO MORE WILDERNESS!

So, what can we do now?   First of all, we must stop squandering Emery County Taxpayer’s money doing SUWA’s work. Frankly, SUWA has plenty of cash to lobby for massive wilderness and doesn’t require any subsidy.  Just have a look at the luxurious TV commercials saturating the airwaves and you’ll see why.  Second, the proposed phony Wilderness bill resulting from these efforts needs to be scrapped. Same goes for the other County Wilderness Bills now in the works. And Third, and most important, everyone must contact our Governor and all members of our congressional delegation demanding there be no more wilderness.  Senator Mike Lee is especially critical because typically the opposition of just one Senator can torpedo a Wilderness bill applicable to his home state.   Sadly, Senator Hatch has become prone to accommodating anything that increases the power of the Federal Government.

You can get full contact information for our congressional delegation at congress.com.

Political environmentalists love to say that once “Wilderness is gone, it’s gone forever”. If they could scrap the propaganda and actually tell the truth, this would become “Once Wilderness is here, it’s here forever”. And when it’s here, gone will be any hope of future economic prosperity for our children and grandchildren.

Like Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon, what happens in the near future will be irreversible and set the stage for the future of our beloved State.  Do we want distant tyrants who don’t like us to rule our land or do we want to be in control of our own dominion?   The time is now and the choice is ours to make.