Judge Blocks Babbitt
Wilderness Inventory

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah —(AP)— A federal judge late Friday granted a preliminary injunction to stop the U.S. Department of Interior's re-inventory of potential wilderness in southern Utah until a lawsuit can be resolved.

U.S. District Judge Dee Benson issued a one sentence ruling just after 5 p.m. MST.

The state and Utah Association of Counties filed a lawsuit last month accusing Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt of illegally reviewing the land without public comment and of being selective rather than surveying all Utah public lands. Benson held a hearing on the matter earlier this week.

Babbitt asked his staff to examine 2.5 million acres of public land for possible wilderness designation. Those lands, which were deemed unworthy of wilderness consideration in the 1970s, are included in environmentalists' 5.7-million-acre wilderness proposal.

The lack of input on the wilderness inventory has angered many Utah elected officials who fear Babbitt is gathering evidence to justify his contention that at least five million acres of land should be wilderness.

Already, 3.2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land is locked up as potential wilderness.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Sorenson defended Babbitt's re-inventory, claiming the presidential appointee has the right to gather information before opening the issue up to public comment.

But Babbitt's authority to conduct a re-inventory may have expired in 1991, the state argued in a motion hearing Tuesday.

The authority to conduct inventories on areas of environmental concern was granted to the Interior secretary under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1979.

Gov. Mike Leavitt and Utah's congressional delegation failed in March to pass a wilderness bill that would have designated 2.1 million acres as wilderness.

Babbitt wants the re-inventory study done by January, if not sooner.