Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
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| Abbreviation | SUWA |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1983 |
| Type | Nonprofit |
| 94-2936961 | |
| Legal status | 501(c)(3) |
| Headquarters | Salt Lake City, Utah |
Board Chair | Tom Kenworthy |
Executive Director | Scott Groene |
| Tom Kenworthy; Rebecca Chavez-Houck; Rusty Schmit; Sharon Buccino; Wayne Hoskisson; Ani Kame’enui; Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk; Oriana Sandoval; Kerry Schumann; Liz Thomas; Hansjörg Wyss | |
| Website | https://suwa.org/ |
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a wilderness preservation organization in the United States based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with field offices in Washington, D.C. and Moab, Utah. The organization formed in 1983 and is a partner in the Utah Wilderness Coalition, a coalition of organizations nationwide that support federal wilderness designation for deserving public lands in Utah.
The primary campaign of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance is to build public support for America's Red Rock Wilderness Act, which was first introduced in Congress in 1989 by Utah Congressman Wayne Owens. The bill has been reintroduced in every session of Congress since. In 1997 the first companion bill was introduced in the United States Senate by Dick Durbin. On October 1, 2009, the bill was discussed in a legislative hearing before the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.[1]
Beginning in 2015, SUWA supported the campaign by the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition seeking the designation of Bears Ears National Monument. SUWA is a plaintiff in two lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump's December 4, 2017 executive order reducing the size of Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument and Bears Ears National Monument.[2]
SUWA also works through the courts to protect areas in Utah that qualify as Wilderness under the federal Wilderness Act of 1964 from uses that would cause these areas to be disqualified from Wilderness consideration.[3] Such uses include off-road vehicle use, oil and gas development, and mining.[3][4]