Maine is blessed with one of the most beautiful natural landscapes in the United States, and fortunately a growing number of Mainers are advocating for protecting our wild places. Increasingly, however, citizens of our state are also speaking up for protecting wilderness outside of Maine. One focal point of special concern is the redrock canyon country of southern Utah – public land that belongs to all Americans. Why should Maine people care about lands in the West, so far away from home?

We care because some of the most magnificent and awe-inspiring landscapes in the world lie in the remote, roadless canyons, mountains and mesas of southern Utah. These wild lands belong to you and me and are supposed to be held in trust for us by the federal government. Yet they are now gravely imperiled, and only Congress can protect them.

Like Americans everywhere, Maine residents have been touched by the spectacular beauty of the redrock country on the Colorado Plateau within Utah. Many of us have traveled there to vacation in and around a half-dozen world-famous national parks including Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, Bryce and Capitol Reef, among others. Yet, Utah’s national parks comprise less than 4 percent of the state. Just outside the boundaries of these parks are federal lands of equally breathtaking color, majesty and geological wonder, often replete with archaeological sites of the Anasazi and other ancient cultures. Together with our parks, these lands are the heart of our magnificent Southwestern scenic heritage.

Of the land around the parks, 23 million acres are managed by the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Out of this, about 9 million acres comprise the pristine roadless canyon country known as America’s Redrock Wilderness.

In truth it is America’s Unprotected Redrock Wilderness, because most of this land is rapidly being opened to oil and gas drilling, unregulated off-road vehicle (ORV) use, right-of-way claims for new road-building, and other private development. These activities degrade precious archaeological sites of our Native American ancestors, harm wildlife and unspoiled natural ecosystems, and irreparably damage our national scenic treasures.

In less than a decade, the number of ORVs registered in Utah has more than doubled to 125,000. Engines pierce the deep desert silence and solitude, spewing exhaust pollution into the air while tire tracks scar the high desert landscape and destroy fragile vegetation. There are thousands of miles of designated routes for ORVs already existing on Utah’s public lands, and millions of acres open to them, yet they are increasingly going into the most remote and most fragile places, leaving no peaceful sanctuary in a natural state, for either wildlife or humans.

A much greater danger to Utah’s wilderness is the Bush administration’s lopsided national energy policy, which lists oil and gas development on our public lands among its top priorities. Although 95 percent of Utah’s productive oil and gas deposits on public lands are already available for development, producers and drillers are clamoring for more. To permanently damage and even destroy Utah’s last sacred wild places for a minor increase in production will later prove to have been a tragically misguided effort to gain energy independence in America. Nevertheless, the Department of the Interior has put oil and gas leasing in Utah on a fast track and opened up thousands of acres of previously protected wild areas to new drilling.

Because this is public land, it is up to the American people to decide what should happen to America’s Redrock Wilderness. We Mainers must make our concerns known to our members of Congress at this important crossroad in federal land use policy. Legislation has been introduced in Congress that would permanently protect the most scenic roadless wilderness areas within the 23 million acres administered by the BLM in Utah. It’s called America’s Redrock Wilderness Act (ARWA). This is balanced legislation, which identifies 9 million acres for wilderness protection and leaves 14 million acres open and available for future economic expansion, industrial exploration and development.

Maine politicians value balanced proposals like this one. In fact, Reps. Tom Allen and Mike Michaud, along with 173 other members of the House and Senate, currently co-sponsor America’s Redrock Wilderness Act, as did Gov. John Baldacci while he was in the House of Representatives.

Curiously, neither Sen. Olympia Snowe nor Sen. Susan Collins, both of whom have consistently supported sound environmental policy, have yet endorsed this legislation. We Mainers would like them to become champions of this bill, just as they have been leaders in protecting Alaska’s arctic wilderness and roadless areas. Both Sens. Snowe and Collins have consistently voted against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) – votes we should all applaud. Our senators have demonstrated in their voting record a recognition that balanced energy policy includes clean renewable generation as well as conservation measures and wise stewardship of our public lands.

Ironically, while it takes an act of Congress to start drilling for oil and gas in ANWR, it will take an act of Congress to stop the drilling in Utah’s wilderness, the very heartland of America’s Wild West. It’s up to Congress, and ultimately, up to us to decide.

After all, the Redrock Wilderness is our land. Let’s save some of it.

Rich Csenge of Topsham is co-chair of Mainers for Utah Wilderness. For more information about this issue or to request a free Redrock Wilderness slide presentation in your community, contact Mainers for Utah Wilderness at muwsave@gwi.net or the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance at www.suwa.org