Activity Report Explorer

Rio Grande Valley Broadband • Entered by Susan Ostlie on June 29, 2021

Advocacy for America’s Redrock Wilderness bill – Senator Martin Heinrich’s staffer

April 14, 2021 – May 14, 2021

Key Issue: Wilderness & Monument Designation/Protection
Activity Type: Advocacy (rallies, lobbying, meeting decision makers, letters/calls/emails)
Key Partners: SUWA and NM Friends of Utah Wilderness

Short Description of Activity

4/14 – Initial Friends webinar with Terri Martin( SUWA) and Dave Doty (NMFofUW) to decide on who will speak about what. – 1 hour; 1 person. Also finding appropriate background photos set in south eastern Utah, and writing my 5 minute introduction to the Great Old Broads and my experiences in Utah’s wilderness areas took an additional 2 hours.
5/10 – Practice webinar to go through who speaks when – 1 hour; 1 person
5/14 – Webinar with Casey Suchors-Field, Heinrich’s DC staffer on ARRWA Co-sponsorship (again) by Heinrich. – 1 hour; 1 person
My contribution to the presentation;
My name is Susan Ostlie and I am the co-leader of the Rio Grande Valley Broadband of the Great Old Broads for Wilderness. Great Old Broads for Wilderness is a national grassroots organization, led by women, that engages and inspires activism to preserve and protect wilderness and wild lands.
The national organization is based in Durango CO, but they have 32 and climbing local groups called Broadbands (like the RGVBB,) that are involved in local issues, as well as national issues like America’s Redrock Wilderness Act.
My personal experience with the lands covered by ARRWA involves my extended family and friends and started in the early 2000’s. We took our children and met family from Arizona and Montana to camp, hike, rock climb, and explore the beautiful red rock areas from west of St George all the way over to the area south and west of Moab. Our daughters grew up exploring these lands from their middle school years to the present day.
In 2009, my sister and I spent over a week in the Escalante area for the Broads 20th anniversary celebration, and also did monitoring of non-existent roads along the Hole in the Rock Road that had been claimed by Kane county to prevent any efforts to have that area recommended for wilderness protections.
One final point I would like to make if I have the time, is that the San Rafael Swell area creates a deep aquifer that extends all the way down to the Zuni Mountain area in NM, and feeds the few remaining springs in the Zuni Mountains.
Our group has many reasons to thank Senator Heinrich for his support of environmental issues on public lands, and also want to thank him for co-sponsoring ARRWA.

Reflection/Evaluation

Heinrich had already signed on yet again to be a Original (?) Co-sponsor by the time of the phone call; his staffer had never been to Utah, and had very little idea what we were discussing. Utah legislators will certainly not agree to sponsor the bill. The July version is in motion at this time to enlist Senator Ben Ray-Lujan as a co-sponsor.