Oct. 31--Utah will reap millions from a $4.6 billion funding increase for the Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service that will help build restrooms near ATV trails, improve a blue-ribbon fishery, help students learn about renewable energy and restore a historic mansion in Salt Lake City.

The total appropriation that Congress approved this week reaches more than $34 billion, which includes funding for fighting wildfires without having to "borrow" from popular Forest Service programs.

The Wilderness Society, a national conservation group, was quick to praise the higher funding, calling it "a much-needed boost" for climate-change research, the National Wildlife Refuge System, public-land preservation and clean water.

"The entire allocation for Interior is a 17 percent increase over 2009," said Alan Rowsome, Wilderness Society appropriations analyst, "so it's really making up for a lot of lean years during the Bush administration."

A spokeswoman at the Forest Service regional office in Ogden said she couldn't comment on how a distinct firefighting fund might help the agency.

But The Wilderness Society and other critics of the way the agency has been raiding projects the public likes best, such as ranger talks, tidy restrooms and trail building and maintenance, long have said firefighting should have its own pot of money.

The 2010 budget allocation, which President Barack Obama is expected to approve, includes:

-- $474 million dedicated to wildfires, with $413 million going to the Forest Service and the rest to Interior. Congress also is requiring the Forest Service to change the way it estimates future fire costs.

-- $385 million for climate-change research.

-- $90 million for the Legacy Road and Trail Remediation Program, which restores healthy watersheds, decommissions obsolete roads and maintains trails.

-- $75 million for the National Landscape Conservation System, which protects scenic public lands.

-- $306 million for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which taps revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling to help conserve the nation's lands and waters.

In Utah, projects that the federal funds will assist, at the behest of the state's congressional delegation, include:

-- $1 million for the new Utah Museum of Natural History near Red Butte Garden in Salt Lake City. Three-quarters of the museum's holdings came from federal lands in Utah and surrounding states.

-- $1.6 million for the Timpanogos Cave National Monument visitors center

-- $697,000 to reconstruct recreational amenities at Pelican Lake near Vernal, a world-class bluegill fishery.

-- $362,000 in improvements near the Five Mile Pass ATV trail west of Lehi on the old Pony Express route.

-- $150,000 to restore the historic Fisher Mansion in west Salt Lake City, part of the National Park Service's "Save America's Treasures" drive.

Other Utah projects

$381,000 for improved recreational opportunities at the Knolls Recreation Area, a popular ATV area in the west desert north of the Dugway bombing range

$1.3 million to buy land for the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge

$450,000 for recreation area reconstruction in Pine Valley in the Dixie National Forest

$1.5 million to acquire private land that lies within the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest

$200,000 for the Forest Service to contribute forest biomass to the Fuels for Schools, a program that burns waste wood to provide heat to public schools

$2.6 million for six Environmental Protection Agency clean-water projects in Lindon, Taylorsville, Clearfield, Draper, South Salt Lake and Weber County

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