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House approves wilderness-resolution wording after heated floor debate over 1.4 million-acre cap
Summary
After extensive debate between rural and urban representatives, the Utah House defeated a motion to remove a 1.4 million-acre reference from a wilderness-resolution and adopted House Concurrent Resolution 13 directing federal consideration of wilderness with several state conditions.
A lengthy, at-times contentious floor debate over House Concurrent Resolution 13 concluded with the House rejecting a substitute motion to delete a 1.4 million-acre figure and then approving the resolution as presented. The resolution reports findings of a legislative task force on wilderness study areas and urges that any federal designation respect state water rights, school trust land interests and existing rights.
Representative Adams, who presented the task-force findings, described the resolution’s background and said the task force recommended that about 1,400,000 acres be considered as prime wilderness by Congress. "Starting the BLM proposal on wilderness...they recommended 1,900,000 acres...but the committee felt...those areas, the 1,400,000 acres that truly qualified as wilderness," Adams said, explaining why the task force settled on the lower acreage.
Representative Anderson moved to delete the numerical acreage from the resolution, arguing that the figure had been added late in the process and was not a task-force recommendation; Anderson urged the House to retain only study-based findings. Proponents of retaining the 1.4 million-acre number, including Representatives Allen, Yardley and others from rural districts, said the figure reflected prime acreage identified by the Bureau of Land Management and was necessary to protect state interests. Representative Johnson urged members to "search your soul" and consider how the resolution would affect rural constituents.
The motion to delete the acreage failed on a recorded vote. The House then proceeded to vote on HCR 13 as amended and the clerk reported the result in the transcript as 49 affirmative and 22 negative votes (transcript phrasing is slightly garbled); the resolution was forwarded to the Senate for its consideration.
The floor exchanges covered water-rights protections, school trust lands, buffer zones, potential impacts on mining and energy development, and whether the task force had sufficient outreach beyond Salt Lake County. The debate highlighted deep rural-urban differences on land-use policy and how a state resolution might shape congressional consideration of federal wilderness proposals.
