Dear Editor,
Utah’s dominantly Republican body politic and its Public Lands Initiative (PLI), through my unapologetic bias toward the irreplaceable sanctity of our nation’s commons:
The PLI is an artfully crafted lands bill that would divest stewardship of federal lands from federal agencies, requiring they be managed consistent with state-approved management plans – effectively ending protection of proposed wilderness, wilderness study areas and designated wilderness throughout much of Utah.
Although, to be fair, a mandate for managing wilderness has been drawn up by Rep. Rob Bishop et al (all Republicans of Utah) in their PLI. By dissing the Congressional Wilderness Act of 1964, and giving state and local officials greater say over what activities can take place on these ecologically intact wide open spaces, wilderness – exclusive to Utah – would now be described as: “A wilderness, in stark contrast to there being any fuzziness to whether man and his timber, mining, grazing and fossil fuel extraction sector should dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are permanently threatened with being trammeled by man, where man himself is the dominant species, privileged to habitually plunder and hoard at his whim – and with impunity.”
