The Wilderness Problem: A Narrative of Contested Landscapes in San Juan County, Utah

An abstract of the thesis of David Banis for the Master of Science in Geography presented April 30, 2004. Tide: The Wildernt;ss Problem: A Narrative o~ Contested Landscapes in San Juan County, Utah Wilderness preservation has been at the center of debates about public land policy for almost half a century, and nowhere has the controversy been more intractable than in Utah. Despite its vast expanses of unsetded and undeveloped red rock desert, managed primarily by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Utah has less designated wilderness than in any other state in the West. In this study, I focus on San Juan County in southeast Utah to study the conflict over the designation of wilderness. The controversy pits local residents and state politicians against state and national environmental groups, with the BLM shifting positions in between. I analyze and interpret the wilderness debate from three different perspectives. The first explores the history of the Utah wilderness debate from the first BLM wilderness inventory in the 1970's through its re-~ventory in the 1990's. I examine the influence of nationa~ regiqnal, and local forces such as institutional change within BLM, in-fighting among't"Jtah-based environmental interest groups, and the sagebrush rebellion and c~unty supremacy movements. The seco~? perspective incorpor~tes the spatial analytical techniques of geog:!lphical ~formation systems to provide a relatively objective view of landscape charaher~tics used to define wilderness. I interpret the landscape as a continuum of varying degrees of wildness, product of inherent naturalness and the influences of human impacts. Lastly, I examine the personal views of the meaning of wilderness through the words of actu participants in the debate. In an analysis of the statements of both county residents well as the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, I explore the mental images and idea that influence the ways in which people value and understand the desert environme