Utah

• About 8 mil­lion acres of Utah’s 54 mil­lion acres of land (about 15 per­cent) are pub­lic U.S. For­est Ser­vice lands.

• Of those 8 mil­lion acres of U.S. For­est Ser­vice lands, about 4 mil­lion acres or 50 per­cent are inven­to­ried road­less areas.

• Cur­rently there are no acres rec­om­mended for wilder­ness in Utah

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Spot­light on Boul­der Mountain

Sit­u­ated at the base of Boul­der Moun­tain, this remote road­less area stretches across BLM, For­est Ser­vice and pri­vate land.

Fish­ing

The renowned Boul­der Moun­tain area of south­ern Utah, much like the Uin­tas in the state’s north­east­ern corner, provides high-quality angling in a unique set­ting. Much of Boul­der Moun­tain is untracked road­less land, where vital pop­u­la­tions of native Col­orado River cut­throat trout swim. But the area’s prized angling pos­ses­sions aren’t the streams and rivers that flow off the shoul­ders of Boul­der Moun­tain. More than 100 lakes pro­vide unmatched back­coun­try angling for a num­ber of species of cold­wa­ter fish. Utahns value Boul­der Moun­tain for good reason–it’s a fish­ing Mecca in a very spe­cial place.

Hunt­ing

Boul­der Moun­tain offers some of the best mule deer and elk hunt­ing in the South­west. Accord­ing to 2009 gen­eral entry sta­tis­tics kept by the Utah Divi­sion of Wildlife Resources, mule deer hunters saw the high­est suc­cess rates in the state dur­ing rifle sea­son, almost dou­ble the suc­cess rates of some other regions of the state.

Hunters have enjoyed marked suc­cess stalk­ing tro­phy mule deer and elk in this area for gen­er­a­tions, largely because of the intact road­less back­coun­try that pro­vides a healthy vari­ety of cover and for­age, qual­ity rear­ing range for calves and fawns, and a mix of healthy and acces­si­ble sum­mer and win­ter range.

Threat­ened habitat

The major­ity of Boul­der Moun­tain is iden­ti­fied as cru­cial mule deer and elk habi­tat, and much, but not all, of that acreage is inven­to­ried road­less land.

Keep­ing these untracked, unspoiled lands intact is vital to the future of the Boul­der Moun­tain big-game herd, and to the future of deer and elk hunting.

Much of the low coun­try in this area is already see­ing pres­sure from devel­op­ment and there is some poten­tial for sig­nif­i­cant oil and nat­ural gas drilling in the area. This fact only high­lights the impor­tance of keep­ing the region’s road­less lands intact, because these lands pro­vide the refuge for some of Utah’s most-prized elk and mule deer.

 

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