Wilderness creation opposed Counties in the Bighorn Basin say preserving the Western way of life is their top priority. The county commissions of Park, Big Horn, Washakie and Hot Springs counties recently submitted 22 pages of comments to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management outlining their vision of how federal land should be managed in the future. "There is concern our Western culture is being destroyed or detrimentally changed," the counties said. The four county commissions submitted remarks together. They were compiled by Ecosystem Research Group, a Missoula, Mont., environmental consulting firm. The counties' comments emphasize the importance of grazing in the basin. If grazing is reduced, "the highest value of these lands ... is to sell to developers and 'hobby' ranchers," they wrote. The commissions also came out against designating any federal lands as wilderness in the basin. Wilderness areas typically are remote, undeveloped and largely roadless. Motorized travel is usually prohibited in an area once Congress designates it as wilderness. "Millions of acres in the west are designated as wilderness," the counties wrote. "We oppose designating any of the lands within the (planning area) as wilderness." The BLM is studying 12 areas as potential wilderness sites. The agency places restrictions on those study areas and the commissions asked that the federal government return those areas to general management....