Posted on 04/21/2007 10:34:50 AM PDT by rwh
WASHINGTON - Two East Coast lawmakers introduced a bill Friday with 73 co-sponsors that would designate as wilderness 23 million public acres in five Northern Rocky Mountain states, including Montana and Wyoming.
Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Christopher Shays, R-Conn., wrote the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act. It would give the government's strongest protections to areas of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. They announced the measure along with songstress Carole King.
Three co-sponsors are from Washington and three from Oregon. Both Montana and Wyoming's representatives condemned the bill and vowed to fight it.
Similar measures have been introduced in several previous Congresses. But this time, the chairmen of the House Natural Resources Committee and the relevant subcommittee have both signed on as sponsors of the bill.
A panel spokeswoman said the committee is reviewing the legislation now and may hold hearings on it, although there are no immediate plans for one.
The bill would designate as wilderness all 20 million acres of inventoried roadless lands in the states and another 3 million acres in Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. It includes 7 million acres in Montana and 5 million in Wyoming.
A wilderness designation generally prohibits timber harvesting and permanent roads, structures and facilities. Hunting, fishing and other recreational activities generally are allowed.
Maloney and Shays said the bill would protect some of the country's most beautiful and ecologically important lands. They said it would save taxpayers $245 million over 10 years by managing the land as wilderness and eliminating "subsidized development" there. They said more than 2,300 jobs would be created through the bill's program to rip out old logging roads and restore the areas to their natural state.
"(The act) has always been ahead of its time by drawing wilderness boundaries according to science, not politics," Maloney said in a statement. "(The act) would also help mitigate the effects of global warming by protecting the corridors through which vulnerable wildlife can migrate to cooler areas."
Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., said all legislation on public lands must take into consideration the opinions of local communities and people who depend on the resources for both work and recreation.
"I oppose this legislation because it's a top-down approach that doesn't properly take into account the impacts on the local economy nor does it adequately protect access for hunting, fishing and other forms of recreation," Rehberg said in a statement. "I'll continue to work to implement responsible policies to protect Montana's natural resources."
Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., called the bill a "147-page assault on our Western way of life" and said local input and control would be slipping away.
"This is an absolutely offensive attempt by East Coast liberals to create sweeping, over-reaching laws for Western public lands without any public input from the folks living in Wyoming who would be heavily impacted by this legislation," Cubin said in a statement. "I have always supported a carefully balanced multiple-use policy when it comes to public lands, and this bill would essentially do away with that type of sensible evaluation."
Cubin said the wilderness designation on Wyoming public lands could lead to "tremendously negative impacts" on local economies.
"Legislation this bad does not warrant committee attention, but if that happens, Wyoming citizens need to know that I will be fighting this bill tooth and nail," she said.
In the Greater Glacier/Northern Continental Divide ecosystem, the core of which is Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness, the bill would place about 2.2 million acres under wilderness designation.
In the greater Yellowstone region, about 6.5 million acres would be designated wilderness.
About 2.7 million acres of mountain ranges separated by prairies, including the Bighorn, Big Snowy, Pryor, Elkhorn, and Caribou mountains, would become wilderness.
About 129,000 acres within the Lewis and Clark National Forest and known as the Badger-Two Medicine Area would be designated the Blackfeet Wilderness.
About 6.2 million acres in the Greater Salmon/Selway region, about 1.1 million acres in the Greater Cabinet/Yaak/Selkirk ecosystem, and about 525,000 acres in the Greater Hells Canyon ecosystem would become wilderness.
And about 8.5 million acres would be designated as biological connecting corridors in the Bitterroot, Sapphire, Lost River, Lemhi, and Bridger mountain ranges.
Another 1 million acres would be wildland recovery areas, meaning work would be done to return the areas to their natural state after development activities.
Hundreds of miles of rivers and creeks in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho would receive the designation of wild and scenic rivers.
In a couple of words - No Motorized Vehicles.
Why does this matter?
A Boy Scout in Utah was badly injured on a campout in a wildreness area. FedGov oficials would not allow a LifeFlight chopper to land an medivac the child to life saving medical care.
Only upon the threat of a massive lawsuit did the FedGov (fill in you r favorite explitive) allow the chopper to land and the boys life was saved.
Wildreness area = keep out sign for
Disabled
Old
Infirm
Hunters
Loggers
Minerial exploration
Pertty much everyone not young, fit and mobile. It is hard to enjoy something you are not allowed to get to....
/rant.
BTW, I live in a huge National Park, its called Alaska.
Western Oregon is already on taxpayers dole, called the “safety net” to the tune of $50,000,000 a year because they discovered the spotted owl and played politics with human lives. Our county of a little over 100,000 people has the highest unemployment in the nation per capita, from loggers losing their jobs to hundreds of mills shutting down. One judge in 1990 said the spotted owl is endangered and all public land production of Oregon’s number one resource stopped.
That is what Oregon produces, timber, and yet the facts are in that spotted owl live in bridges and brand new forest. Our timber, Douglas Fir, do best when logged in clear cut strips. We call them the wildlife enhancement strips, the deer and Elk come from miles around to eat the fresh grasses that grow in the newly logged area. New trees are then replanted and in 20 to 30 years can be harvested again.
In my county, Douglas county, we have the most productive timber lands in the nation, according to a county commissioner, yet congressmen who live in NY and probably have never been to Oregon or seen a vibrant managed forest are making more laws to shut us down?
Before 1990, one mill in our county, and we had hundreds, sent 12 million a year in taxes to the federal government. Now we have to have the feds send $50 million a year to us, just to keep our police on the street and the schools open.
New York City pollutes with the most horrible amounts of filth and dirt, let this stupid woman clean up her own sandbox and Shays is nuts. They want to close the national forests to any kind of motorized vehicles? Nonsense, this means that the very badly managed and half-dead millions of acres of trees will never be allowed any kind of underbrush or dead tree removal. The pine beetle and the spruce budworm are just a few of the resultant lack of decent forestry management. The fire damage is astronomically high with the arrogant policy these eastern twits propose, The morons in the forest service do “allow” a few trees removed each year for the public’s Christmas trees, for a fee. Stay out of our far too big and mismanaged national forests, enough damage from congressional twits!!
Whatever happened to states rights? Why even have states if the government can come in and tell them what to do with their land?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
And reintroduce large predators - grizzly, lion, (Canadian) timber wolves - in every urban park in the Eastern states.
That must be why Carole King was there.
We have so much “wilderness” area now that WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO EVEN DRIVE THROUGH .. why in heck do we need more ..?? The govt can’t take care of what they already have.
Do you know if there are currently any homes or businesses in the proposed area this article cites? If so, how many? (One or two, or dozens, hundreds...?)
My goal is to move to Alaska. I’m very much a “middle of nowhere” kind of person and Alaska offers lots of it. Areas closed off from development sounds good to me on the surface but your answers tell me that it’s not quite that simple.
Not wanting to allow a helicopter to come in for that injured boy is anally stupid. I would also think that any homes currently in the area would be grandfathered in and allowed to stay as they are, with road access. Kicking people out of their homes and off their land is also anally stupid, wrong on so many levels, and should be illegal.
I don’t see how a few dirt roads to provide access for needed maintenance would be bad. I don’t see how mainenance is bad either.
Illegals shouldn’t be here in the first place and drugs are supposed to be against the law. IMO it ought to be ok for the locals who come across them to get them out and make it clear that they risk life and limb if they try to come back.
I don’t make the rules though. I’d love to see more wilderness areas but not the way you’re saying it’s legislated.
What part of Alaska are you in? Freepmail me if you ever want to brag about your beautiful state.
And 8 years of us trying to hammer it into people's thick heads. Has anyone been here yet to inform we knuckle draggers that all this is a good thing?
They sold out, and cheap, I might add. Local governments go for this nonsense because the Feds wave some $ at them to implement this stuff.
It won’t be long I’ll bet.
It's really insane. They won't even allow firefighters in these areas. They'd let 50,000 acres burn down of their precious 'wilderness' designation before they'd take a backhoe in there to stop it and dust up one lousy old road. Pure insanity.
Why not designate DC as a wilderness area? Much of it is jungle already.
Michael Frazier
They’re your groupies, hedge! Kind of like Greatful Dead followers. LOL!
Too bad the lobbyists and the rest of the marrons that run that place aren't 'endangered species'.
LOL I believe you’re right!
Sounds like another government land grab.
Do a search on returning America to a state of wilderness. I understand these people have changed their name so as to be less threatening to Mr.and Mrs. Sheeple.
Michael Frazier
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