Mike Matz, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

Mike Matz is executive director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which is pushing to preserve 9.1 million acres of Utah canyon country as federally protected wilderness.

Today is one of the most gratifying days we'll ever experience on this nettlesome matter of how much wilderness in Utah should be set aside for future generations to enjoy. Today is the day America's Redrock Wilderness Act is introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The legislation embodies the new and improved citizens' inventory of public lands that remain wild in Utah, held in trust for all of us by the Bureau of Land Management. BLM administers 23 million acres in Utah, and after two years of fieldwork, our intrepid volunteers documented 9.1 million acres that qualify for wilderness designation. We've got dozens of boxes of maps, now all stored on a Geographic Informational System, and thousands of photos -- aerial and on-the-ground shots -- to prove it. The mapping is without a doubt the most comprehensive inventory of its kind ever conducted.

Our inventory is backed in the main by a complementary inventory undertaken by the BLM itself, although the agency didn't look at all lands under its care, only the 6 million acres of wilderness contained in an earlier citizens' proposal. Still, the agency now acknowledges that 5.8 million acres hold the requisite characteristics for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System. If it had finished the job, it would probably have affirmed the rest of our 9 million acres.

Today's milestone is all the more meaningful because of this astonishing fact: America's Redrock Wilderness Act has 133 original cosponsors. That's 30 more than signed on at the onset of last Congress when the bill we were backing had 3 million fewer acres. I'll be candid. We fully anticipated that members of Congress would feel more trepidation sponsoring a bill that called for additional acreage, but with great glee we will note that a bigger bill actually garnered more support. In the Senate, where the bill was introduced two week ago, 12 senators were cosponsors from the start -- as many senators as became cosponsors in all of the last Congress. The leap in support is attributable to our concerted efforts at public outreach.

For the past several weeks, poor Dave Pacheco has been living out of his truck on the road in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, and now Indiana and Wisconsin. He's been showing a slick slide presentation to a plethora of local Sierra Club groups and chapters, college environmental classes, and small gatherings at some of our members' homes. At each showing, he's entreated people to write their members of Congress asking them to support America's Redrock Wilderness Act. Keith Hammond, another of our outreach mavens, has supplicated activists in California, Oregon, Washington, and elsewhere in the West to pen their letters as well. Meanwhile, in the nation's capitol, Larry Young plays the inside-the-Beltway game by trundling around to office after office as the consummate lobbyist. Earlier this year, he hosted a lobby week for around 150 activists, helped them with their message, and pushed them out the door to go meet with their members of Congress.

While our opponents in the oil and gas industry, coal companies, and corporate cattle concerns no doubt have more money to throw around, where they can never match us is in the breadth and depth of feeling among our activists that these places are unique and need to be protected. Arm our folks with the information they need -- through action alerts, list serves, and direct appeals -- and there ain't nothing we can't do. On the cosponsor list in the House are enough Republicans that with such a slim majority these days in the House, we could win a vote on the floor if given the chance. Rep. Jim Hansen of Utah, chair of the House Resources public lands panel -- please give us a vote on the floor.

Then we'll really have something to celebrate. But in the meantime, we'll probably take time out tonight to lift a few brews. Here's to you, Dave and Keith and Larry, and to all the rest of you who helped us reach 133.

Simply unbelievable.