This week, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill, resurrected the Red Rock Wilderness Act to set aside eight million acres in Utah as wilderness. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, say if Durbin is so crazy about wilderness, he should have a new designation in his own state.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-UT, and Rep. John Curtis, R-UT, introduced legislation Thursday to designate 289,000 acres of land in Illinois as federally protected wilderness. It’s an attempt to troll Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, who introduced America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act Monday that would designate 8.4 million acres in Utah as federally-protected wilderness areas.
An Illinois senator asked Congress for more Utah wilderness land, without any Utah co-sponsors. In response, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) wants more Illinois land.
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A drill rig outside of Milford, Utah. Drilling in the state has returned to pre-pandemic levels, despite a pause on leasing new federal public land to energy producers.
Energy companies sounded the alarm when President Joe Biden indefinitely paused oil and gas leasing on federal public land in January. They projected
But drilling in Utah has already returned to pre-pandemic levels according to data from the state’s Division of Oil, Gas and Mining. That’s not a surprise, according to Landon Newell with the conservation group Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, since the price of crude oil is also back up to where it was at the end of 2019.