The Western Counties Alliance

3549 North University Avenue, Suite 300
Provo, Utah 84604
Phone: 801-373-4749 Fax: 801-373-4731
www.westerncounties.org

July 10, 2001

The Honorable Gail Norton
Secretary of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20240

Dear Secretary Norton:

The Western Counties Alliance is a new group that has been organized to create stronger and more effective alliances between public lands counties and the companies, user groups and individuals who share with them the common goal of preserving and promoting multiple use management of the nation's public lands and resources.

Initially, we are focusing on several projects. One of these is taking over sponsorship of the Wilderness Act Reform Coalition (WARC), a group that was organized several years ago to pursue legislative and administrative reform of the Wilderness Act.

We know you are aware of the many problems with BLM wilderness policy, both with respect to management of formally-designated wilderness areas and with respect to Wilderness Study Areas or areas which are claimed to have wilderness characteristics but which were not given WSA status in the initial inventory. We would like to suggest several actions that we think you could take administratively to resolve a number of these problems with the latter category of land.

As you know, the previous administration initiated several BLM "wilderness re-inventory" efforts. The furthest along of these is in Utah, where the BLM "found" about 60% more acreage that qualified for possible wilderness designation than it found in the original Section 603 inventory. This re-inventory was seriously defective both in the criteria applied to screen BLM acreage for wilderness characteristics and in the lack of public involvement and compliance with other requirements of FLPMA. As a result, the Utah Association of Counties and the State of Utah sued your predecessor over this effort.

A similar effort is currently ongoing in Colorado as you are also no doubt aware. Several additional areas are being considered under a Section 202 planning process for designation as "administrative WSAs." Since the Section 603 process authority expired nearly a decade ago we question whether the BLM can manage areas in such a category. However, our more immediate concern is that this effort, like the Utah effort, was conducted using flawed inventory criteria.

There are two problems in this regard. One is that even the original inventory of BLM lands for wilderness characteristics begun in the late 1970's departed substantially from the intent of Congress in passing the Wilderness Act. We will be happy to supply you with a critique of that original effort. These recent "re-inventories" have departed even further from the flawed original inventory effort.

The second problem arises as a result of the academic research that has been done since the Wilderness Act was adopted in 1964. One of the results of this research has been the development of the "Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS)" which attempts to provide a standard set of guidelines and criteria to evaluate the recreational opportunities for a particular parcel of land.

The consideration of wilderness from a recreational perspective is fundamental to any valid policy analysis because wilderness designation is almost exclusively a recreation management scheme and not a land protection designation. Indeed, as with any management approach, there are inevitable trade offs among various resource values. Some of these values may be enhanced by wilderness designation but others are clearly harmed by it.

Of course, this is not the way wilderness is portrayed by wilderness activists, by most of the media and by many of the wilderness specialists in your Department. Rather, it is commonly paraded as a land protection designation with recreational aspects largely considered secondary or even lower in management priority. Certainly this approach permeates BLM's re-inventory efforts in recent years.

Taking this recreational approach to wilderness policy and possible wilderness designation is certainly more legally sound. It also significantly changes the practical nature of the policy debate as the enclosed study, "Application Of The Recreation Opportunity Spectrum To The Utah Wilderness Issue," illustrates.

One of the general guidelines of the ROS, which has been formally adopted by the Forest Service and is used less formally by the BLM, is that a true wilderness recreation experience requires that an individual to be at least 3 miles from the nearest road or trail where motorized vehicles are used. When a buffer of this width is applied to county road systems in Utah, most land currently recommended or suggested for formal wilderness designation is disqualified. Even a buffer of only 1.5 miles, half the width called for in the ROS general guideline, disqualifies most of these areas. This ROS guideline is particularly significant in its impact on "cherrystemming" roads in areas under consideration for wilderness designation, a practice that clearly violates the intent if not the letter of the Wilderness Act.

While the ROS guidelines were developed after the first BLM wilderness inventory was completed, they were in wide use long before the more recent re-inventories were done. Yet, we can find no evidence that they were even considered. This is perhaps understandable given the very political nature of these re-inventories. They clearly were designed to lock up as much land as possible and remove it from multiple use management. Such a political exercise is clearly not acceptable, however, and we hope that the new administration will take a more honest and legal defensible approach to wilderness issues.

In this respect, we would like to make several suggestions:

1. Impose an immediate moratorium on any further wilderness "re-inventory" activities by the BLM or any other agency in your Department. This is particularly important with respect to Colorado where a team continues to work through the 202 planning process towards a goal of designating "administrative WSAs." An environmental impact statement is being prepared as part of this planning process. Given that the criteria used to evaluate the areas under consideration were flawed generally and not only because they did not include the ROS criteria, continued preparation of this EIS is a waste of tax dollars and agency resources.
2. Create a public advisory panel to conduct an in depth review of wilderness policy in your department and make appropriate recommendations. This should include a detailed evaluation and critique of the wilderness re-inventory criteria used by the BLM.
3. Direct BLM state offices to apply the ROS road buffer criteria to WSAs and any "re-inventory" areas in their state and issue maps showing the results for public review. Since the 3 mile buffer is a general guideline, we suggest that similar criteria be applied as in the maps in Appendix D of the enclosed report, that is a 1.5 mile buffer and as well as the 3 mile buffer. This exercise by the state offices would be especially useful in light of the "citizen wilderness inventories" being conducted by wilderness activists in many western states. While these activists claim to be following the requirements of the Wilderness Act and subsequent BLM regulations and criteria, they clearly are not. None of them even acknowledge the ROS guidelines in their "inventory" efforts. Those recommending wilderness must bear the burden of proof on an area by area that the ROS 3 mile buffer recommendation should be ignored. Maps issued by the BLM illustrating the impact of these buffers would help keep the wilderness dialogue in these states much more honest.
4. Re-inventory yet again the BLM land in Utah and Colorado that was found in the recent re-inventory to have "wilderness characteristics." This time, however, the re-inventory should be done with full public participation and conducted by a balanced team of BLM employees using the full range of appropriate criteria including the guidelines of the ROS. We realize that in the case of Utah this may require the cooperation of Congress. In Colorado, however, another re-inventory should be something that could be accomplished administratively.

In addition to these major recommendations, we have a number of narrower suggestions of other administrative actions that you could consider which we would like to discuss with your appropriate staff people.

We will provide any additional background information we have that might be helpful to you or your staff and assist in any other way we can in whatever wilderness related efforts you undertake.

Sincerely,

Sheldon Kinsel
Executive Director