Organizers of the High Uintas Preservation Council, who fought for 15 years protecting wilderness in Summit County, are calling it quits.
The group plans to disband in December, according to High Uintas Preservation Council founder Dick Carter.
"You know, I’ve been saying what I’ve been saying for years and it has simply not connected," Carter said in an e-mail to The Park Record.
In the group’s June newsletter, Carter said the environmental movement "has just left me behind."
"It is a vastly different movement with a deeply different psychology, different expectations and engaged in a very different manner than was my experience," Carter wrote in the High Uinta Preservation Council’s June newsletter. "Conservation is not expected nor sought."
He criticized the U.S. Forest Service for doing little to protect rivers and allowing timber harvesting and the use of all-terrain vehicles to increase in the forest.
As a resident of Cache Valley, Carter said "it is just too far from the Uintas to get there on a meaningful and regular basis."
"There is simply no room for a measured or collaborative approach," Carter wrote. "We are simply not real players."
He described today’s environmental movement as "built upon a highly technical/cyber-electronic model."
"And try as I might, I just can’t get my hands on or head around it," Carter said. "I’m still hooked on a walk, a topo map and pencil."
Membership renewals for the High Uintas Preservation Council ended last December.
"In the end a person pushing and pulling this kind of organization has got to believe our voices are more than simple bearing witness," Carter wrote. "Bearing witness may be all we can really do and may be the most important thing we can do, but it can’t be the impetus for an organization like [the High Uintas Preservation Council.]
Remodel: Sundance Film Festival needs temporary venue
The awards ceremony at the close of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival will have a new venue. This week, festival organizers will approach the Snyderville Basin Special Recreation District about the possibility of hosting the closing festivities at the Basin Recreation Fieldhouse, 1388 Center Drive.
The awards ceremony has traditionally occurred at the Park City Racquet Club, which will be under construction during next year’s film festival.
"The Sundance folks are scouting possible venues for the closing party," said Bonnie Park, a spokeswoman for the Snyderville Basin Special Recreation District. "They’ve just had some brief discussion."
Basin Recreation board members are slated to hear from Sundance Wednesday at 6:10 p.m. at a meeting at 5715 Trailside Drive.
"I know they’ve looked at some other venues, but I think that’s the only one that would fully support the entire group for both the awards and the party," Park said. "It’s about a three-day impact."
District officials would negotiate a fee for Sundance to use the recreation facility at Kimball Junction.