BY JUDY FAHYS THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Saturday, Sept. 29, 2001
Nearly 1,000 citizens have weighed in so far on the long-term plan for the Uinta National Forest on everything from strolling to logging, four-wheeling and everything in between.
Environmentalists complain too little roadless wilderness would be preserved. Off-highway vehicle enthusiasts gripe that more trails should be cut through the woods. Some comments came from Utahns. Some from other states.
Forest planners will continue taking public comments through Monday.
Their draft plan, released in May, covers 950,000 acres of the Wasatch Mountains from Point of the Mountain at the north edge of Utah County to Nephi in Juab County. It includes such popular areas as Mount Nebo and Mount Timpanogos, as well as the fishing hot spots, Currant Creek and Strawberry reservoirs.
The Forest Service also oversees a patch of land that includes the Sheep Rock Mountains west of Eureka in the west desert.
The land, the roads, the wildlife it all gets increasing pressure from the growing population on the Was
atch Front. More people means a greater demand on the forest for everything from solitude and watershed to picnics, biking, hunting logging, grazing and motorized recreation.
The plan revisits how to squeeze those uses into the forest.
"It zones the forest out as though it was a city plan," said Andi Bauer, part of the Uinta Forest planning team. "We will analyze every comment."
Several environmental groups have been rallying people to send in comments on the plan.
Save Our Canyons, which hosted a letter-writing party last week, said that the draft plan being criticized allows motorized use over too much of the forest, about three acres of every four. In addition, the group complains the draft plan seeks only 30,000 acres more wilderness, while the group thinks 40 percent makes more sense.
"People, wildlife and water quality will all be better off if we leave our motors at the city limits," said Gavin Noyes, SOC director.
The Utah Environmental Congress, a consortium of green groups, critic
izes the draft plan for being sloppy.
The group says more acreage should be preserved (virtually all of the 594,500 acres designated as roadless) and sensitive species should be better protected, including the spotted frog, the whooping crane, the Boreal toad, Peregrine falcons and Canadian lynx. It concludes the planners have done too little to back up their suggestions with scientific data and nothing that might slow the harmful impacts humans are having on the forest environment, the group says.
"In its current format, the [draft plan] is a legally indefensible document that demonstrates willful contempt for federal environmental laws on the part of the Forest Service," the UEC concludes.
