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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Report: Some Utah Destinations "Too Wild to Drill"

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Wednesday, July 24, 2013   

MOAB, Utah - Oil and gas companies already have leased more than 38 million acres of public land, and a new report says there's no need for them to target other parcels that adjoin national parks and areas with wilderness, historic and recreation values.

The Wilderness Society report names a dozen locations in eight states it says are "Too Wild to Drill."

Utah is home to two of them - Arches National Park and Desolation Canyon. Nada Culver, director and senior counsel for The Wilderness Society's BLM Action Center, said 25 million acres of the land currently leased haven't been developed.

"That's a lot of land, about the size of the state of Florida, that they're sitting on," she said. "That is public land that belongs to everyone, and it's not being produced but it's being tied up and it is a concern, here and everywhere else."

Culver said the Bureau of Land Management in Utah has instituted a master leasing-plan process and is doing a better job than some states of balancing multiple uses on the land the agency controls. However, in her words, it's an "ongoing struggle" to ensure that priorities other than energy development receive fair consideration.

The report mentions a plan to allow almost 1,300 oil and gas wells in the Desolation Canyon area that gained BLM approval about a year ago. Culver said conservation groups are asking that the agency pare down the plan by a few hundred wells and keep them off the land closest to the canyon.

"They certainly got a lot of pressure from this company, claiming that it was really important to drill this area," she said. "We don't think anything could be more important, when there's already more than 1,000 wells that could be drilled, to take the opportunity to protect wilderness and wildlife, and water and recreation, and cultural history."

The report also noted that 1 million people visit Arches National Park every year - most likely to see the natural stone arches, not oil and gas wells.

The full report is online at wilderness.org.


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