Salt Lake County's Backyard Wilderness

The new 110th Congress looks on wilderness more favorably than any congress for the last twelve years. We need to speak out now for currently unprotected lands in the central Wasatch Range. Please send a message to Rep Jim Matheson at http://www.house.gov/matheson/contact.shtml and Sen Bob Bennett at http://bennett.senate.gov/contact/email_opinion.cfm by using the message generators on their websites.

Here's an example of a message to send, but please customize it by adding a few words describing your own experiences in the Tri-Canyons area:

Dear ________________:

I encourage you to sponsor legislation to protect as wilderness the remaining US Forest Service roadless lands in Millcreek, Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood Canyons in Salt Lake County. These lands provide drinking water and solitary recreation to ever-increasing numbers of Salt Lake County residents. My family and I have enjoyed hiking trails in these canyons for years. I'd like to add my voice to those, such as Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon and the Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities, that favor wilderness protection for these vital lands.

Sincerely,

Your Name

Background

Although the Wilderness Act was passed in 1964, it wasn't until 1978 that Utah got its first wilderness. The Lone Peak Wilderness Area was established through the Endangered American Wilderness Act in 1978 when a bouquet of spectacular wilderness areas across the country was permanently preserved.

Utah had to wait until 1984 for all US Forest Service roadless areas to be considered in a systematic way, but that system was deeply flawed. The result was that a handful of areas in Utah-predominantly rock and ice above timberline-was preserved. At the time, more than half of Utah's eight million acres of US Forest Service lands were roadless. The Utah congressional delegation led by former Representative Jim Hansen and former Senator Jake Garn saw fit to protect only approximately 700,000 acres.

The Mount Olympus and Twin Peaks Wilderness Areas in the central Wasatch were designated in that bill, the Utah Wilderness Act of 1984. Garn insisted that a substantial acreage of roadless lands fully meriting inclusion in the wilderness be excluded in order to allow continued heliskiing in Millcreek Canyon and to allow future ski resort expansion.

Volunteers and staff from Save Our Canyons and other environmental groups have re-inventoried these public lands to confirm their roadless status and suitability for wilderness designation. Our members, and Utahns generally, understand the best long-term protection for critical watershed in the Tri-Canyons Area is wilderness protection. The time has come to correct the oversight in the 1984 bill.

The Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club would like to extend the boundaries to include what we originally proposed in 1984 and has organized the roadless lands into four sections as follows:

1. Mount Aire Wilderness Addition - One of the most frequented areas in the tri-canyon area as it offers easy access to the beautiful vistas of the entire range. This addition would also provide safe corridors for wildlife which would nearly double the current range of uninterrupted habitat.
2. Mount Olympus Wilderness Addition - An area that was left out of the 1984 Wilderness Bill to accommodate for helicopter skiing. These lands are inventoried roadless, home to many species of plants and animals including the threatened Wasatch Shooting Star.
3. Twin Peaks Wilderness Addition - This area is precious to backcountry hikers and skiers because it contains some of the most beautiful wildland in the Wasatch Mountains. It is also home to golden eagle nesting sites that need undisturbed habitat to sustain the species in their current location.
4. Lone Peak Wilderness Addition - A sliver of land that in located between existing Wilderness and a ski area. Under current Forest Service Regulations, ski area special use permit expansions are not permitted. Sensitive watershed areas, wildlife habitat, and splendid backcountry views would be jeopardized if ski areas did expand into this area.

The boundaries of these proposed wilderness additions have been drawn to minimize conflicts with mountain bikes. Popular trails such as Millcreek Pipeline, Dog Lake and the Great Western Trail all lie entirely outside of the wilderness proposal in order to respect other non-motorized trail users while providing maximum protection to the watershed.

The Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities, the managers of Salt Lake City's water supply, supports wilderness designation for most of these lands. They have not yet (as of publication of this issue) taken a position on wilderness on the north slope of Millcreek Canyon. Salt Lake City does not yet use its share of water from Millcreek for culinary water. Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, and a number of partnering environmental organizations including Save Our Canyons have also endorsed the proposal.

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