President Barack Obama will soon get the opportunity to sign into law the largest expansion of protected national wilderness since Bill Clinton’s first term in office. The Omnibus Public Land Management Act, approved by the House of Representatives last Wednesday, will protect 2.1 million acres of public land stretching from California to West Virginia.  Although the bill was promoted primarily by Democrats, 38 Republicans voted in favor of its passage. After years of negotiations among federal, state and local officials, environmentalists and others, the legislation will protect:

 

-1.2 million acres of the Wyoming Range (which will protect half of the state’s moose population from oil and gas drilling)

-517,000 acres of canyon lands in Idaho

-470,000 acres in the Eastern Sierra and San Gabriel Mountains in California

-11,700 acres of Lake Superior shoreline in northern Michigan

-More than 1,000 miles of scenic rivers and streams

 

The bill, a bundling together of 164 separate bills, will also create new conservation areas and national parks, including two in New Jersey: the Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park and the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange. The last time the federal government set aside this much land for protection from development was 1994, when six million acres of Southern California desert was given special wilderness status.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Wilderness Bill Clears the House on Its Second Go-Round (by Mireya Navarro, New York Times)

Congress Votes “Yes” to Sweeping Public Lands Protection Act (Environmental News Service)

House Passes Historic Protection for Wilderness, Rivers, Parks (Sierra Club press release)