An example of the problems this bill attempts to address:
As we earlier reported (June 13 Human Events page 12), Environmental rules are hampering Border Patrol operations near the Mexican border, even as the agency doles out millions in taxpayer dollars meant to offset damage to endangered species.
Because of a pond inhabited by endangered pupfish, Border Patrol officers can use their vehicles to pursue illegal aliens only if the chase stays on the main road. If the pursuit veers into a 42-acre sector near the pond, officers must continue the chase on foot or horseback.
Border Patrol agents can’t drive vehicles into designated Wilderness areas, as well as certain areas of national parks and monuments.
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Agreements between the Homeland Security and Interior Departments on how best to protect the ecosystem are frustrating lawmakers who say they also prevent agents from conducting routine patrols.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=44433
Another excellent article explaining why this bill is needed and why greenies and socialists everywhere are against it:
Off Limits: Homeland Security & Green Groups Fight Over the Borderlands
by Cara Daniel, Green Watch, February 2012 (view as PDF here: GW0212)
Summary: The federal government has set aside hundreds of millions of acres of public land for ranching and forestry, national parks and wilderness areas, and it tasks various agencies to monitor and regulate land conservation and use. Because over 20 million acres of these federally-protected lands can be entered from across the U.S. border, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is required to patrol often difficult and hard-to-reach terrain. The job performed by the U.S. Border Patrol is made even harder by restrictions that require border security projects to abide by a myriad of environmental protection laws. Recently a bill in Congress, H.R. 1505, the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act, was introduced to immunize DHS from many of these federal restrictions. Green groups are up in arms. They fear that DHS enforcement will hurt the environment and trample on individual rights. But many Americans living along the increasingly crime-ridden borderlands disagree.
https://www.capitalresearch.org/2012/02/gw-test/