A poll released Monday and commissioned by an environmental activist group shows that half of Utahns favor new wilderness designations for at least 9 million acres of federal land in the state, despite overwhelming opposition to a land bill by all five members of Utah's congressional delegation.
The so-called "Red Rock" wilderness bill, backed by a coalition of environmental groups, is up for discussion in a U.S. House committee hearing Thursday that is expected to garner a slew of criticism from Utah's congressmen and other elected leaders.
The bill, which is getting its first airing after being introduced two decades ago, seeks to set aside 9.4 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land as "wilderness."
Such a designation would mean commercial activity such as oil and gas development would be off limits, as well as off-road vehicles like ATVs and dirt bikes.
The poll released Monday by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, one of the proponents of the bill, was done by Dan Jones & Associates and tapped 609 Utah respondents.
Of those surveyed, 50 percent favor at least 9 million acres of wilderness, while 19 percent say it should be something less than that. Another 14 percent say no land should designated as wilderness. The Bureau of Land Management oversees 23 million cares in Utah.
Most of those polled, 38 percent, live in Salt Lake County, while 19 percent were from Utah County, and 11 percent were from Davis County. The rest, 24 percent, live elsewhere in the state. The survey has an error margin of plus or minus 4 percent.
Deeda Seed, SUWA's outreach director, said the poll demonstrates that support for wilderness designations is becoming more broad-based, appealing to a cross-section of people with diverse interests.
"Increasingly, people along the Wasatch Front are seeing open spaces disappear," giving rise to the urgent need to protect Utah's prime wilderness areas, she said.
Both Seed and SUWA executive director Scott Groene say they view Thursday's hearing as a first step to jump-start the discussion on wilderness designations in Utah.
"We view the hearing as a good start," Groene said, adding that the hearing should be viewed as the impetus to not say "no."
Seed concedes SUWA and others pushing passage of the bill lack "political" leadership on the issue.
"We'd like to hear from them what their solution is," she said.
Mike Swenson, executive director of the Utah Shared Access Alliance, was critical of the poll's numbers and said people generally do support "wilderness," without full knowledge of what that designation means.
"I am surprised their numbers aren't higher, because you can look out your window at the mountains, and of course, you want to protect them."
Swenson, who chaired the August Take Back Utah rally, an event critical of federal control of public land in Utah, said local congressional opposition to the measure should speak for itself, as should a resolution passed by the Utah Legislature in 2008, urging rejection of the bill.
"You can put a pink tutu on a pig and put lipstick on it, and it is still a pig," Swenson said. "And this is still a pig bill."
