On January 6, 2006, President Bush signed into law a bill that included designation of the 100,000-acre Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area in Utah (P.L. 109-163). The wilderness designation is part of the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) Protection Act, which was attached to the final version of the large Defense Authorization Act approved by Congress in December 2005. This legislation not only preserves this special wild area with exceptional recreational and natural features, but also allows the Air Force continued use of the Utah Test and Training Range, which includes air space above the wilderness area.
The designation of the wilderness area has hindered the plans of a private company trying to create a high-level nuclear waste storage facility on the Goshute Indian Reservation. The Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area now prevents the company from building a rail line to deliver waste to the site, although the company could still continue with the less desirable option of trucking the waste to the site. Nonetheless, Utah is claiming a victory in the fight to prevent this storage facility, which raises safety concerns due to the close location of the waste facility to the highly populated Salt Lake City area and to the military’s air force training area and bomb and missile training range.
Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT) was the champion for the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area bill with support from Senators Hatch (R-UT) and Bennett (R-UT). With the designation of the Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area, Utah can now add 100,000-acres of Bureau of Land Management wilderness to its statewide wilderness inventory. This is the first new stand-alone wilderness area designated in Utah since 1984. It is also the first time in history that Congress has passed legislation expressly designating BLM managed wilderness in Utah.
“With today’s success, Utah can proudly take a big step forward on Utah wilderness,” said Suzanne Jones of The Wilderness Society. “We thank the Utah congressional delegation, especially Congressman Bishop, for their leadership in advancing this win-win wilderness proposal that protects both the public and our public lands.” The wilderness area designated by the bill includes both BLM recommended wilderness and about 33,000 acres of citizens’ proposed wilderness identified in an exhaustive Utah citizen's inventory. The acreage and boundaries for the Cedar Mountains closely follow the America's Redrock Wilderness Act proposal for the region.
Background
The Cedar Mountain Wilderness Area is less than an hour drive from Salt Lake City, where over 80% of Utah’s population lives. The Cedar Mountain range runs north –south through the Great Salt Lake Desert, rising 7,700 ft with a rugged topography of canyons and ridgelines. This juniper-pinion area provides great recreational opportunities and is home to wildlife including mule deer, pronghorn antelope, coyotes, bobcats, golden eagles, and an occasional mountain lion.
The Cedar Mountains lie beneath the protected military airspace of the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) – the United State’s largest and most used air force training facility. The continued use of this area is considered of high importance for military readiness.
Further, the Goshute Indian Reservation lies near the southern portion of the UTTR. A controversial proposal to ship nuclear waste to a dumpsite on the Reservation created momentum to designate the Cedar Mountains as Wilderness in large part because the designation would help block railway access to the proposed nuclear waste dump and also allow the Air Force to continue to use the UTTR airspace. Members of the Utah congressional delegation and the military were concerned that should the nuclear waste facility be built that the Air Force would have to curtail operations in the southern portion of the UTTR for safety reasons.
In the 108th Congress, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) introduced the Utah Test and Training Range Protection Act. Conservation groups worked with Rep. Rob Bishop to craft an agreement on the wilderness portion of the bill that would afford real protection for the Cedar Mountains and address concerns about wilderness management language in the original bill. Congressman Bishop successfully guided the bill through the House of Representatives last fall, but the Senate failed to take up the measure. Rep. Bishop reintroduced the bill in April 2005, and it was included in the House-passed version of the Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1815), but was not included in the Senate-passed version of the bill thereby requiring House and Senate negotiators to decide whether the Cedar Mountains Wilderness provision would be included in the final measure.
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