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The Utah Wilderness Association was organized in 1979 as a voice for Utah's wilderness. Dick Carter, Hyrum resident and former Utah representative for the Wilderness Society, founded the Utah Wilderness Association in the midst of the Bureau of Land Management's 1980 inventory of Utah lands and the Forest Service's second RARE (Roadless Area Review Evaluation) study, both of which pushed the UWA into action to further protect Utah wilderness.

RARE II was to determine which undeveloped areas needed preserving as part of a national wildlife preservation system and which areas needed no further study and should be open for other uses. In Utah, RARE II suggested that 14 areas be preserved, while Utah wilderness activists like Dick Carter believed that many more areas were worth preserving. The 1978 RARE II recommendations and the 1979 initial action of the BLM to drop 17 million of the 22 million acres in Utah being reviewed pushed Dick Carter into forming the UWA.

The UWA appealed the BLM's report and lobbied for the addition of 900,000 more acres in Utah. The UWA, along with other scientists and activists, compiled a 1,400-page appeal and submitted it to the Interior Department's Board of Land Appeals in 1981. The appeal was enacted in 1983, leading to the push for a Utah Wilderness Act, which was signed into law by President Reagan in 1984. In less than five years of operation, the UWA achieved significant legislation and public notice for wilderness lands in Utah. Initially, the Utah Wilderness Act created twelve officially sanctioned wilderness areas in Utah, including the High Uintas, Mt. Nebo near Nephi, the Wellsville Mountains in Cache Valley, and Mt. Naomi in northern Cache County. The dedication ceremony took place in August of 1985 with an emotional Dick Carter speaking about the importance of Utah's wilderness and stressing that much needs to be done to preserve other Utah acreage not covered by the Wilderness Act.

The organization grew from about a dozen members at its first meeting in May 1979 to more than one thousand committed members in the early 1990s, mostly from northern Utah. Other issues that concerned the members of the Utah Wilderness Association were grazing, timber harvesting, and especially oil drilling in Utah wildernesses. On numerous occasions, the UWA appealed drilling and oil exploration in the High Uintas.

The mission statement of the Utah Wilderness Association declares that the organization "is dedicated to the preservation of Utah's wilderness, public lands, and the flora and fauna dependent upon them." Though a greater percentage of the organization's efforts were centered on wilderness and land usage, some of the more prominent wildlife issues that UWA advocated were bans on bear baiting, as well as sandhill crane and cougar hunting. Concerned with these issues, the Utah Wilderness Association published "A Utah Wildlife Manifesto" in 1989, which was updated periodically in the following years. Though the document was labeled "anti-hunting" by some readers, the UWA contended that the concern of the manifesto was wildlife management. The manifesto called for the initiation of a multipurpose wildlife license for both hunting and nonconsumptive wildlife use, the establishment of wildlife preserves and refuges, the development of educational programs, and the promotion of wildlife as a tourism and recreation benefit. In addition, the manifesto was concerned with the composition of state policy-making boards, such as the Wildlife Board and Board of Big Game Control. The UWA felt that there was not adequate representation on these boards for the nonconsumptive environmental and wildlife constituency.

The Utah Wilderness Association was active until 1996, when several board members left the association, including founder Dick Carter, and the organization lacked sufficient funds to continue. The UWA went into "hibernation" and virtually ceased all operations. In seventeen years of active existence, the UWA remained committed to its mission: "We provide detailed technical analysis of and make recommendations on specific public resource and land management issues. We publish a newsletter discussing issues which affect Utah's public lands and wildlife; host educational seminars, field trips and workshops; and promote grassroots activism. The bimonthly newsletter, Utah Wilderness Association Review, was a way to let the members know what issues the UWA was actively pursuing. The UWA also spent a great deal of time fundraising. The first organized fundraiser was in 1979, when Edward Abbey gave a lecture at the University of Utah's Olpin Union Ballroom, and a felt hat and an old shoe were passed around the audience to collect money. The UWA relied heavily on donations, annual membership dues, and volunteers to maintain the organization.

The Utah Wilderness Association also devoted as much effort to educating the public as it did to passing environmental legislation. Through poetry contests, lecture series, workshops, and public awareness programs, the Utah Wilderness Association made sure that the public recognized the association's efforts. Dick Carter, in his farewell letter, recognized the positive impact of the organization: "While our achievements are widely recognized, including the Utah Wilderness Act of 1984 which designated 12 Utah National Forest wildernesses, our real success was the 'mainstreaming' of a Utah environmental movement."

Currently (June 2003) Dick Carter is directing a new organization called the High Uintas Preservation Council, which is dedicated to many of the same causes as the UWA.