COMB RIDGE, Utah -- Not far from the crest of this Navajo sandstone ridge, the cliffs speak of the ancient Anasazi Indians. Their petroglyphs--sparsely drawn deer and people marching in a procession--adorn a rock face looking out over a wide-open southeastern Utah landscape.

"You come here, and it's so humbling," said Veronica Egan, 57, an advocate for preserving America's remaining wild lands in a natural state. "You can't help but get perspective."

Yet it's not clear what will become of this place of red-streaked rocks and giant juniper trees, with mesas rising in the distance and delicate flowers blooming among sagebrush. In the late 1990s, the federal government decided the area might qualify for the highest level of protection available to public lands: designation as a wilderness area.

Now, under a new administration, the government has changed its mind, and this land is caught up in a heated controversy over the future of wilderness in America.

At the center is a new Bush administration policy, disclosed recently as part of a legal settlement with Utah, that calls for the Bureau of Land Management to stop assessing its land holdings for possible wilderness classification.

The bureau, the largest manager of public lands in the United States, oversees 264 million acres in 12 Western states, including the canyons of Comb Ridge dotted with ancient Indian cliff dwellings and relics, giant glaciers in Alaska, and vast desert grasslands in New Mexico.

"Essentially, what this administration is saying is `no more wilderness,'" said Michael Matz, executive director of the Campaign for America's Wilderness, one of several environmentalist groups that filed a lawsuit in May to stop the new policy from going into effect.

The policy flies in the face of consistent public support for setting aside more land for protection, Matz said, noting that the Interior Department's decision was made without public notice or comment. Interior spokesman John Wright said public involvement is not required in legal settlements.

Environmentalists are overstating the threat, said Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), one of 28 House and Senate members from the West who called for the change in letters to Interior Secretary Gale Norton in the past few months. Congress retains the authority to specify which public lands should be classified as wilderness, and nothing prevents it from setting aside more lands, he said.

But timing may be everything in this controversy.

If oil and gas leases are granted or roads built before Congress acts, both sides concur that America's remaining wild lands could be marked irrevocably by human hands and could lose any ability to qualify for wilderness protection.

U.S. lands marked as wilderness must be in pristine condition; in turn, they enjoy the highest level of protection against potential development or despoilment. No roads are allowed, nor any motorized transportation. No logging, mining or oil and gas exploration is permitted. The land is set aside "untrammeled by man" for future generations, as noted in the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964.

Already, lawmakers are beginning to mobilize to counter what they consider a threat to unspoiled lands.

About 100 U.S. lawmakers urged the interior secretary to reconsider the new policies in a letter last week, saying, "You have effectively taken away an important management tool for the BLM to protect some of the finest remaining wild lands in America."

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is preparing a bill that would protect 2.6 million acres of federal lands in California, and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) recently introduced legislation that would safeguard 1.6 million acres of public land in her state.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is championing a new version of America's Redrock Wilderness Act, which would set aside 9 million acres of federal land in Utah for protection. The Republican-dominated Utah congressional delegation does not support the bill, which has failed to pass in previous incarnations.

The political odds are against these proposals, and conservationists fear that whatever relief they promise may come too late.

With the administration's emphasis on oil and gas development, wells could be drilled relatively quickly in pristine areas such as western Colorado's Roan Plateau or the 1.8 million-acre Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico, an area of grasslands in the Chihuahuan Desert. Both areas sit on top of what are believed to be substantial energy reserves.

Concerned about the potential damage to the region's ecology, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson wrote Norton in May asking that the state be consulted before any development begins at Otero Mesa.

Utah lawmaker Cannon counters that while the environment is important, "I believe a robust American economy depends on energy production, and we have to strike a better balance on our public lands."

Deal seen as `1-2 punch'

Meanwhile, in what environmentalists are calling a "one-two punch," a separate April settlement between Utah and the Interior Department over local claims to rights-of-way on federal lands could open wilderness-quality areas to significant road development. About 15,000 rights-of-way claims are expected to be filed in the state.

The road settlement could set a precedent for other states to make similar claims, according to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a conservationist group. Recognizing this, California officials sent a letter to the Interior Department two weeks ago requesting that local road claims in that state not be processed.

With roads would come the foreclosure of any opportunity to set aside these areas as wilderness, as well as a significant potential increase in use by all-terrain vehicles-- bringing more people and machines into these areas.

The new policies are a dramatic turnaround from those of the past decade and "the greatest threat to wilderness in almost 40 years," said Matz of the Campaign for America's Wilderness.

Since 1964, when landmark wilderness legislation was passed, Congress has set aside 106 million acres of Forest Service, National Parks, Fish and Wildlife, and Bureau of Land Management land in the National Wilderness Preservation System. More than half of the land is in Alaska.

Under the Clinton administration, several steps were taken to expand wilderness reviews. Local managers were directed to assess Bureau of Land Management properties for wilderness-like qualities, and institute interim protections on these lands if such characteristics were found.

Critics called this a way for the Clinton administration to create "de facto wilderness" without seeking congressional authorization, as well as restrict other possible activities on those lands, such as mining, logging and off-road vehicle use.

Westerners: `This is our land'

This kind of federal interference inflames passions in the West, where a "leave me and my lands alone" mentality holds significant sway.

"Don't come and dictate to me what I can do where I live," said Bill Redd, 70, a former southeastern Utah county commissioner who lives in Blanding. "This is our land, and we need to be able to live off of it."

In 1996, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt directed the agency to classify an additional 2.6 million acres in Utah as "wilderness study areas." By law, such areas are treated as wilderness until Congress decides whether to grant that official status to the land.

That was too much for those in Utah who thought the government was taking away their land by administrative fiat.

The state and an association representing Utah counties sued, but most of their claims were thrown out by a federal appeals court in Denver. In March, Utah amended its lawsuit, which had been dormant for years, and reached a settlement with the Interior Department.

Now, under a strict and controversial reading of federal law, the department contends that the Clinton-era policies overstepped the agency's authority, and it has rescinded protection of all the lands deemed to be potential wilderness areas during the past decade.

Only the 22.8 million acres formally identified by the Bureau of Land Management during a 15-year congressionally mandated inventory, which ended in 1991, will be managed as wilderness unless Congress decides to enact legislation creating more bureau wilderness areas.

About 3.2 million acres in Utah are included in the 1991 wilderness inventory. That's grossly inadequate, said Heidi McIntosh, conservation director for the Southern Utah alliance, which organized a survey of the state's lands in 1990s. Based on documentation assembled by more than 500 volunteers who crisscrossed the state on foot, the group argues that 6 million additional acres qualify as wilderness.

"That's just ludicrous," said Redd, a former sheepherder, miner and sawmill worker. "We have already got all the protected land we need. The rest has oil, copper, uranium and minerals in it, and it ought to be produced."

Whatever decisions are made will have long-term repercussions. "[Wilderness] can't be created," said Egan, interim executive director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, an activist group based in Durango, Colo. "It can only be destroyed."

U.S. lands marked as wilderness must be in pristine condition; in turn, they enjoy the highest level of protection against potential development or despoilment. No roads are allowed, nor any motorized transportation. No logging, mining or oil and gas exploration is permitted. The land is set aside "untrammeled by man" for future generations, as noted in the landmark Wilderness Act of 1964. [emphasis added]