Successful and responsible conservation should and will be achieved when Americans who have the most at stake are listened to and respected and not treated as a nuisance and deemed irrelevant.

Our goal should be to empower people, not make mandatory solutions.

This bill, produced without a map so we know exactly where they want to do, has had some research done.

There are four concerns that I have with this piece of legislation.

We can and should protect America's great natural spaces, yet it should not be done in a dictatorial manner that freezes out and refuses to even consider the views of local citizens and local leaders that would be directly affected.

I am deeply troubled by legislation whose sponsors live far from the communities and districts whose legislation they are targeting.

This particular bill is a relic from the past. It has not been successful since the Age of Disco and will not be successful now or in the future.

What we need to do is go forward with the process that almost every editorial in the State of Utah says: Try to come to local consensus with people coming together where the government agrees with individuals, not having something coming…

The economic gains from wilderness recreation appear to be inconsequential and may likely be more than offset by losses associated with the decline in activities incompatible with wilderness.

I would be surprised if there were many Members of Congress who would not take at least some offense at a proposal to set aside a sixth of their state or district without their consultation or input.

Whenever you do changes to public lands in Utah there will be collateral damage, and there will be collateral damage that hits kids.

I would like to make a motion of unanimous consent that a letter from the Utah State Board of Education be inserted into the record, who is opposed to this proposal.

One of the problems I have with this particular bill is that every state in the West with all of those public lands was promised elements that would help their public education funding.

We now want to create nine million acres of wilderness. That means 18 percent of Utah has to support the rest of the state.

If my kids are going to have a decent education in Utah, my state has to have a balanced economy.

One in every three acres is owned by the Federal government, and 90 percent of that land is congregated in the West.

The reason why I am Chairman of the Western Caucus, if for no other reason, is because all the colored land in there is land that is owned by the Federal government.

I appreciate that opportunity and, in honor of our Senators being here, this is the beginning of a filibuster.