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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, lashed out Wednesday at environmental groups that renounced a plan to designate 15 wilderness areas and guide development in Utah's southwest corner, one of the nation's fastest growing regions.
The legislation that Bennett and U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, plan to introduce in Congress carves out areas of Washington County for growth and could nearly double the size of St. George, a city closer to Las Vegas than Salt Lake City.
It calls for the sale of up to 25,000 acres of federal land to private developers or the county, gives more public land to a water district and designates corridors for future roads, motorized trails and utilities. It also expands Zion National Park and grants the Virgin River wild and scenic status, the first such designation for Utah.
The plan follows an example set by Nevada's Clark and Lincoln counties, another rapidly growing area.
Environmental groups were invited to help craft a plan for Washington County but maintain they were shut out of critical negotiations in the end. They say the plan safeguards less than 30 percent of the public lands in the county that are worthy of wilderness protection.
"We tried to offer our views to work out something we could all agree upon," said Pete Downing, legislative director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.
"Their complaint that they were shut out is their own fault," Bennett said in an interview with The Associated Press. "They said, 'These are our nonnegotiable demands,"' then walked when they couldn't get agreement, he said.
SUWA, nonetheless, has demonstrated clout in Congress and its cooperation could be key for any bill to succeed. The group claims to have defeated a dozen wilderness proposals offered by Utah's congressional delegation in the past decade, because they fell short of what the group said is needed to preserve Utah's redrock country or contain "poison" provisions.
Bennett acknowledged that SUWA and other environmental groups were strong enough to defeat legislation at Congress, but not strong enough to ensure passage of their own proposals -- a formula for stalemate that has characterized the Utah wilderness debate for much of two decades.
"They will be among the big losers, because the uncontrolled growth that's going on in that part of Utah is ultimately going to do them far more damage than the solutions laid out in this bill," Bennett said.
Together with the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society, SUWA issued a statement opposing Bennett and Matheson's draft legislation.
The Nature Conservancy said it was giving its conditional support for the portion of the plan that would enhance protection for the desert tortoise and rare plant species such as the dwarf bear claw poppy.
"Our mission is biodiversity conservation," said Dave Livermore, the Utah state director for The Nature Conservancy, who said his group usually stays out of wilderness fights.
While Bennett's bill calls for 15 new wilderness areas in Washington County, many are small and scattered, ranging from as few as 35 acres to no more than 18,290 outside Zion National Park, where an additional 123,743 acres would be designated wilderness.
Conservation groups said land inside Zion park already is protected, while as many as 200,000 other acres in Washington County that are worthy of wilderness protection will go wanting.
"We fully expected these groups to come out and oppose it, even though they were involved in the process," Washington County Commissioner Alan Gardner said.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
