WASHINGTON, DC (September 26, 2006) - The Wilderness Society supports four public lands bills that will be considered tomorrow by the Senate Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee. The bills would add more than 900,000 acres to the National Wilderness Preservation System in Idaho and Oregon and would establish a 5,000-acre national monument in New Mexico as part of the Bureau of Land Management's National Landscape Conservation System.
The Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act (H.R. 2603, sponsored by Rep. Mike Simpson) would designate approximately 318,000 acres of federal lands in Idaho's Boulder-White Clouds as wilderness. The bill would also cap motorized recreation use, the primary threat to the integrity of wildlands in the area.
The Owyhee Initiative Implementation Act (S. 3794, sponsored by Sen. Mike Crapo) is the culmination of nearly five years of work by Senator Crapo's office and the 14 member Owyhee Initiative Work Group, comprised of Idaho ranchers, conservationists, county commissioners and outfitters. The legislation would permanently protect 517,000 acres of wilderness, safeguard almost 400 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers, initiate a plan for managing off-road vehicle use, and ensure the future viability of ranching families by authorizing permanent retirement of voluntarily relinquished grazing permits as well as the option to acquire alterative land more suitable to grazing.
For both Idaho bills, there are provisions that TWS does not support, including compensation values and elements of the land conveyance package. Nevertheless, both bills represent tremendous conservation gains and protections against threats that currently degrade wilderness-quality lands.
The subcommittee will also consider S. 3854, introduced by Oregon Senators Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden, which designates 128,400 acres of wilderness and 81 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers in the Mount Hood National Forest. Representatives Greg Walden and Earl Blumenauer are scheduled to testify at the hearing on a second Mount Hood bill, H.R. 5025, which recently passed the House. H.R. 5025 would designate approximately 77,500 acres of wilderness and 25 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers.
Both bills protect areas containing ancient forests and key wildlife areas, and provide a wealth of recreational opportunities for Oregonians and Americans. Mount Hood is a regional icon and well known nationally. The bills also resolve a controversy involving a ski development expansion and provide direction for working on forest stewardship, recreation, and transportation development issues on the Mount Hood National Forest.
Wilderness designations permanently protect wild and unspoiled lands within National Forests, National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and other federal public lands for recreation, wildlife habitat, watershed and other important purposes, including hunting and fishing. To preserve their unspoiled, pristine character, wilderness designations prohibit logging, mining, oil and gas development, and construction of power lines and roads in federally designated wilderness areas. Motorized and mechanized vehicles are also not permitted.
"The Idaho and Oregon wilderness bills are the product of years of hard work and difficult negotiations," said Bill Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society. "Each contains provisions that we would not have written ourselves, including some that we might not support in another time and place. Nevertheless, we enthusiastically celebrate what they all have in common: permanent protection for hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine, unspoiled, natural lands for all Americans to enjoy."
Also on the schedule to be considered is the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument Establishment Act (S.3599), which would create a new national monument out of approximately 5,367 acres of Bureau of Land Management land and preserve it for further scientific investigation. If approved, the new monument would be part of the BLM's National Landscape Conservation System. The act can be traced back to 15 years ago, when amateur geologist Jerry MacDonald discovered a 290 million-year-old site in the Robledo Mountains in Doña Ana County, New Mexico that contains tracks of pre-dinosaur creatures, footprints from 11-foot-long fin-backed reptiles, small to medium size amphibians, indentations from raindrops and water ripple marks. The bill would protect the site and also require the Secretary of the Interior to provide public interpretation of the paleontological resources.
"The Trackways National Monument," said Meadows, "would protect a site of tremendous scientific value, while adding to the worthy lands managed by BLM as part of its conservation system."
