Judge Says Babbitt Attempted
End-Run In Wilderness Scheme

SALT LAKE CITY —(AP)— A federal judge stopped a re-inventory of potential federal "wilderness" in Utah because Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt was relying on a statute that has expired.

U.S. District Judge Dee Benson, who issued an injunction stopping the secretary last week, elaborated with a seven-page ruling earlier this week in which he accused the department of trying to make an end-run on the state.

More important, Benson wrote, the statute that authorized the original inventory of Utah's wildlands in the 1980s and '90s expired in 1991. Babbitt, he said, has no legal authority to continue the review.

Babbitt ordered the Bureau of Land Management to conduct a re-inventory of roughly three million acres of land in southern Utah with an eye toward setting aside up to 5.7 million acres as wilderness.

Utah officials, including the governor and congressional delegation, have tried and failed to get Congress to designate just 2.1 million acres of BLM land as wilderness.

The state and Utah Association of Counties sued last month, accusing Babbitt of not seeking public input as required by the evaluation process. Benson agreed, saying the department was trying to conduct in secret what Congress intended it do "only in the light of public scrutiny."

In the written memorandum, Benson ventured the state will prevail in court.

Benson reconstructed the history of the BLM wilderness controversy in Utah, pointing out that the initial inventory lasted 15 years and ended in 1991 with then-Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan identifying roughly 2.5 million acres of potential BLM wilderness.

On Oct. 18, 1991, Lujan recommended to Congress that about two million acres be designated as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System.

According to Benson, the law authorizing the wilderness review process expired two days later, "thus terminating the authority to conduct a comprehensive study of wilderness characteristics on federal land."

Yet, two months ago, Babbitt established new wilderness procedures that would have authorized the BLM to complete a reinventory of the lands sometime next year.

"At no time during this reinventory effort have (Babbitt and the Interior) allowed participation or comment from the state, the affected counties or the public at large," Benson said.

Lawyers for the federal agency had argued that no public participation was necessary because the reinventory was simply a "fact-gathering effort." Benson rejected the argument, saying the applicable federal law is "replete" with requirements for public involvement and local coordination.

The statute cited by Babbitt in ordering the reinventory "appears to charge the secretary with maintaining an ongoing effort to catalogue the general resources and values of all public lands," the judge wrote.

"But (it) does not appear to authorize the single-purpose, wholesale reinventory that the (federal agencies) are now attempting," Benson wrote.

And to interpret the law as allowing Babbitt to proceed without public comment "would be to pretend that (the earlier authorization) has not just expired, but in fact never existed," Benson added.