By Dusty Decker

If you have not taken two seconds to think about wilderness and the proposed Redrock Wilderness Act, a bill introduced in Congress in 1989 and up again for consideration, you might want to know a little bit about it and what happens if it becomes law.

The Utah State University Ecological Coalition of Students, or ECOS, had a showing of the film Wild Utah last Thursday with co-president Jim Steitz talking beforehand and leading discussion afterward. The other co-president is Sarah Lundstrum.

The ECOS club has been pushing to get support for the Redrock Wilderness Act all semester. The film shows a lot of great scenes and repeatedly reminds viewers of the importance to protect this land.

They've also been encouraging students to send letters to U.S. Rep. Jim Hansen, Sen. Orrin Hatch and Sen. Robert Bennett asking them to be co-sponsors of this act.

The Redrock Wilderness Act, reintroduced by Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York, calls for 9.1 million acres of Bureau of Land Management or BLM land to be made into designated wilderness. This land would be protected and would prohibit destructive human interactions such as mining, grazing, and motorized or mechanized vehicles.

One must realize the role that the BLM plays. The BLM is part of the federal government. It oversees 22 million acres of land in Utah. Those lands are public. Under a congressional mandate of multiple uses, the BLM manages these lands.

The ECOS club and many environmental groups aren't happy with the BLM. They even call it the "Bureau of Livestock and Mining" because they think the BLM is careless and fails to control these lands.

In 1964 a Wilderness Act was passed by Congress authorizing future designations of Wilderness Study Areas. This protected those lands from logging, road building, mining, oil/gas drilling, off road vehicles and any construction.

In the 1980s after reviewing its lands in Utah, the BLM decided on 3.2 million acres to be made Wilderness Study Area. This land is still in existence and the BLM is planning to designate more. Around the same time wilderness advocates identified 5.7 million acres.

Then in 1995 the Utah congressional delegation introduced a wilderness bill that put environmentalists in an uproar. It designated only 1.8 million acres as wilderness and set a lower standard of protection by allowing electrical lines, transmission towers and new reservoirs to be built. The bill also stated that all non-designated lands could never be considered again for wilderness.

Now the America's Redrock Wilderness Act is again before Congress. The committee that has jurisdiction is controlled by Hansen, who is for wilderness. Right now there are only 168 co-sponsors in the House and 15 in the Senate. There need to be 218 votes in the House and 51 in the Senate to pass.

Some major reasons why environmentalists want this act passed include stopping further roads from being built, also stopping portions of the wilderness from being turned into industrial oil fields, to prevent the permanent damage done by off-road vehicles and further to protect rare wildlife in Southern Utah.

This act will affect everybody if it is passed, and if it is not, environmentalists won't give up. Regardless if you think it affects you, it might be wise to at least know what the act is about and what it jeopardizes or saves.

Wallace Stegner in 1960 wrote in a wilderness letter, "Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams..."

After the film Steitz answered questions. He is not originally from Utah but feels strongly about getting the Redrock Wilderness Act passed. He stressed the further need for support in Utah and said that he felt it was crucial to the future of our species to pass this act and he feels it is an acceptable sacrifice.

Some individuals in the group suggested that there be more of a push to get support from the religious community, but Steitz was hesitant to agree that this would be possible. He also said that it was better for them to back down from taking direct action against land being misused and instead maintain respectability so that everyone will take them seriously and not consider them to be extreme.

The ECOS has another showingat 7 p.m. Wedneday in the TSC Auditorium on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

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