SELECTING WILDERNESS AREAS TO CONSERVE UTAH BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY

Congress is currently evaluating the wilderness status of Bureau of La nd Management (BLM) public lands in Utah. Wilderness areas play many i mportant roles, and one critical role is the conservation of biologica l diversity. We propose that objectives for conserving biodiversity on BLM lands in Utah be to (1) ensure the long-term population viability of native animal and plant species, (2) maintain the critical ecologi cal and evolutionary processes upon which these species depend, and. ( 3) preserve the full range of communities, successional stages, and en vironmental gradients. To achieve these objectives, wilderness areas s hould be selected so as to protect large, contiguous areas, augment ex isting protected areas, buffer wilderness areas with multiple-use publ ic lands, interconnect existing protected areas with dispersal and mov ement corridors, conserve entire watersheds and elevational gradients, protect native communities from invasions of exotic species, protect sites of maximum species diversity protect sites with rare and endemic species, and protect habitats-of threatened and endangered species. W e use a few comparatively well-studied taxa as examples to highlight t he importance of particular BLM lands.