Utah Delegation Spreads Disinformation on Wilderness

Overview

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• Overview
• The disinformation campaign
• Big Lie #1: paid volunteers?
• Big Lie #2: SUWA spent millions!
• Big Lie #3: Utah people do not want wilderness!
• Big Lie #4: no commercial development
• Big Lie #5: no more grazing in wilderness
• Big Lie #6: "hard release" language is gone
• Big Lie #7: Road Claims in 1997
• Summary: what you can do

 
"Even if the majority were in favor of the 5.7 [million acre wilderness bill] in that process [last year's wilderness hearings] would be very misleading [sic], and I'll tell you why. As we went to the 5 locations that we had hearings at around the state, we had the same people testifying at each one. They would get in their busses and caravan with us. SUWA [Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance] paid people to come in and testify."

 
"The environmental community, both in and outside Utah, was well organized and paid its partisans to testify. They even rented buses and vans to transport these people from location to location."

 
"We had almost the same people at every location, demanding to testify, saying the same things each time, and making it look like they had more numbers than they really did."

 
"The fact is that we are being sandbagged not so much by our colleagues but by a well-orchestrated and well-financed campaign staged by huge, huge national environmental lobbies who are pursuing their own national agenda."

 
"I will confess I think that in terms of the PR battle over the Utah wilderness, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has probably won that battle, at least for now. The full-page ads that they have run and the tremendously powerful national campaign for which they've paid -- I do not know how much it cost; my guess is that it's in the millions of dollars that they've spent on this -- they're certainly capable of raising millions of dollars...."

 
"This type of big business, well-financed campaigns that they establish are really not constructive.... This is really a battle between some of the well-financed elitists and the people who live in the State of Utah.... Unfortunately the playing field does not happen to be level. We find ourselves being tied up by a group of elitists. This debate is really a difference of opinion between the well-financed elitist lobby who wants all or nothing and the rest of us who are looking for resource protection and balance..."

 
"As we have seen, the intensive lobbying by a relatively small segment of motivated extremists who say 2 million acres is not enough, does not represent the prevailing attitude in Utah by a long shot..."

 
"Please accept this letter as an explanation of the public response which my office received with respect to this [Utah wilderness] issue. Personnel in the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget read, recorded, and responded to each of the 3,031 individual letters which were received last year and also categorized the 551 individual public testimonies received at the public hearings held in Utah last spring and summer. In examining this information, 51% of these letters and testimonies were in favor of no wilderness designation whatsoever or something less than the 5.7 million acre proposal. Certain groups throughout the state have publicly stated that support for 5.7 million acres of wilderness has ranged from 70% at a minimum, to upwards of 75%...this is most definitely a misrepresentation of actual public sentiment."

 
"There are 8 million acres where there will never be a strip mall or a hamburger stand or any other kind of commercial exploitation in the state of Utah. There are 8 million acres right now in national forests..."

 
"Under the terms of the Wilderness Act, prior activities are grandfathered in and allowed to go on. If you had a grazing permit, according to the act, you can continue to graze. If you had a mining permit, according to the act, you can continue to mine. In fact, we know that once something is designated as wilderness, all that goes out the window; it is walled off; no human activity whatsoever regardless of what may have been going on there before."

 
"Our release language does contain a sentence that has raised questions. This sentence says: "Such lands shall not be managed for the purpose of protecting their suitability for wilderness designation.... This sentence in the substitute does not foreclose a Federal manager from managing an area of land to protect its wilderness character. This sentence does not prohibit a BLM district manager from managing an area of land for its wilderness values. Statements to the contrary are false." [Emphasis added to clarify apparent intended semantic differentiations.]

 
"The proposed language is a stark contrast to the "soft release" language included in past wilderness bills...the difference between the standard "soft release" and the unprecedented "hard release" now proposed for S. 884 is fundamental. With "soft release" the agency may use its management discretion to protect roadless areas important for wildlife and to create opportunities for primitive recreation and solitude. "Hard release," as proposed by the Utah senators, would prohibit the professional federal land managers from protecting these values.... "

 
"Fully 99 percent of wilderness study acreage not designated as wilderness under [S. 884] would be made available for hardrock mineral development... and for new oil, gas, and coal development."

 
"The bill [H.R.1745] would create the ironic situation that management inside wilderness could be less protective than management of public lands not designated as wilderness."

 
"If these road claims are disallowed, rural county schools will have to helicopter their kids to school."

 
"I've hiked that land more than any person in this room..."