WATERSHED PROJECT

Utah Gov Teams with Nature Conservancy on Big Lands Initiative

By Headwaters News, 7-19-06

The Nature Conservancy, one of the world’s largest and most successful conservation organizations, has long had the gift of dodging politics. Even a scathing series of incriminating pieces by the Washington Post in 2004, which led to a minor shake-up in the organization and a Congressional investigation into some of its business practices, did little to knock the powerhouse off its giant green feet.

Be its simple, apolitical mission, its gifted marketers or simply its past success doing things people like, the organization continues to woo beyond traditional, liberal conservationists. Case in point is the quote emblazoned on the cover page of its newest lands initiative, Living Lands and Waters, from Republican Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

“If we are to build a better tomorrow, we must conserve Utah’s lands today,” it reads (PDF). “I am pleased to endorse the Nature Conservancy’s Living Lands and Waters Campaign, and I believe it will make an important contribution to Utah’s future.”

The plan, as the Salt Lake Tribune reports today, intends to preserve land in eight key areas of the state, protecting the areas not from people, but for them. The eight key areas are all areas that are either already heavily populated, or are suffering dramatic increased in development. The Salt Lake Valley and the Mojave Desert (Washington County) are two of the key areas.

Gov. Huntsman likes the idea, and agreed to support it by pledging support from state agencies to help the organization reach its campaign goals. He also said he’d try and find more funding for the LeRay McAllister Open Space Fund, which has been stuck at barely $1 million.

But at a talk introducing the plan at the Rotary Club in Salt Lake City, the governor, quoted in the Tribune, said “All of us have a vital economic interest in protecting these critical lands and water resources. And we can do this without killing the golden goose.”

As Tribune writer Joel Baird points out, that golden goose is development.

A recent report by the Salt Lake City-based Oquirrh Institute shows that Utah and Salt Lake City are losing the natural amenities that are driving much of the interest in development — one of the West’s greatest modern ironies. Without the striking desert and mountain landscapes, no one will want to move there and build the pricy houses on bluffs that, in turn threaten the striking desert and mountain landscapes.

Maybe The Nature Conservancy is slyly playing into that notion to rope in support from the likes of a Republican governor. And maybe the group will have better luck than a failed open space bond a few years ago that intended to raise $150 million but which was rejected by voters. Regardless, the Nature Conservancy has big, bold plans to protect much of Utah’s landscapes and watersheds, and it will likely succeed.

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