Conservationists are celebrating the Tuesday听passage by the Senate of the massive Natural Resources Management Act, one of the most significant and sweeping pieces of created in years. The bill designates some 1.3 million acres of wilderness, creates six new National Park Service units, and most importantly, permanently reauthorizes the venerable Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), ensuring conservation acquisition funds for generations to come.
鈥淕iven the contentious and partisan nature of politics in Washington, this is a huge moment,鈥 says Adam Cramer, executive director of the , a consortium of outdoor recreation advocacy organizations. 鈥淭hat the one thing all those senators can agree on is conservation makes this doubly sweet.鈥 The bill passed by a vote of 92 to 8听补苍诲 is moving on to the House of Representatives, which is expected to pass the legislation.
The 662-page bill is a conglomeration of some 100 pieces of legislation. Though it was largely championed by western lawmakers like senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Ron Wyden of Oregon, the bill does provide conservation benefits for every state through the LWCF, which helps federal agencies, states, and local communities purchase land for parks and access to open spaces. That鈥檚 why experts believe it has been the rare issue with bipartisan agreement during the Trump administration. As with all large congressional bills, however, the National Resources Management Act is an act of compromise that leaves听some wary of its effects.
The legislation most conservationists are skeptical of is the introduced by Murkowski and fellow Alaska senator Dan Sullivan. The legislation would allow Native Alaskan armed-services veterans who missed a听historic 1971 homesteader land allotment to claim 160 acres of federal public lands. , is that it鈥檚 a wrong that was already righted in 1998听补苍诲 currently there鈥檚 nothing to stop beneficiaries from selling their land to developers. That puts some 448,000 acres at risk.
鈥淎laska鈥檚 public lands often tend to be the political grease for land-conservation initiatives in the Lower 48, and that鈥檚 wrong,鈥 Adam Kolton of the Alaska Wilderness League told the 国产吃瓜黑料 contributing editor听Christopher Solomon in . 鈥淭hese are the last fully intact ecosystems in the United States. They shouldn鈥檛 just be trade-bait to pass broader public lands bills.鈥
As with all large congressional bills, however, the National Resources Management Act is an act of compromise that leaves some wary of its effects.
While most conservationists, including Cramer, didn鈥檛 like the Alaska Native Veterans Land Allotment, they didn鈥檛 view it as a poison pill for the larger act. Cramer particularly lauded the breadth of conservation tools used in the bill鈥攊t creates new national park units, new national monuments, new wilderness areas, new wild and scenic river sections, and a new national recreation area, and it withdraws the right to develop minerals in two separate watersheds.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a much more modern and precise approach to conservation,鈥 Cramer says.
Similarly, Cramer points out that the bill鈥檚 bipartisan support听probably came down to the way that most of the individual legislation was created鈥攂y convening multiple stakeholders, including those on opposite sides of the issues, to help hash out agreements. No single piece of the puzzle illustrates that approach better than the Emery County Public Lands Initiative, which creates听in a single Utah county听some 660,000 acres of wilderness,听a new national monument, a new national recreation area, and designates听two new sections of the Green River as part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.听
The bill was crafted over some 20 years by stakeholders as diverse as ranchers, offroaders, the Bureau of Land Management,听the听Forest Service, and wilderness advocates. The basic idea was that in order to preserve traditional uses like ranching and four-wheeling on nearby public lands, locals would agree to create huge swaths of wilderness and forge no new motorized routes, traditionally an anathema to rural Utah residents. As recently as late October, the notoriously hard-line Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance decried the bill as听鈥渁 step backwards for conservation鈥 and organized a protest of some 300 people against the bill. Yet on Tuesday, SUWA executive director Scott Groene praised the bill as听鈥溾
So what changed in the meantime?
In November, Illinois senator and noted wilderness champion Dick Durbin negotiated an additional 100,000 acres of wilderness, adding听acreage听in Utah鈥檚听Muddy Creek and Labyrinth Canyon areas. That was enough for SUWA to bless the deal, despite provisions like releasing some acreage currently protected as a wilderness study area so that a coal mine can be expanded.
鈥淐reating 660,000 acres of wilderness is huge,鈥 says Groene. Similarly, Emery County public lands director Ray Petersen says that locals are happy to have the land quarrels of the past close to settled. 鈥淭here鈥檚 still some trepidation about creating wilderness around here,鈥 he says. 鈥淥nce people realize that they can still go out and do what they want to do, I believe they鈥檒l all be happy.鈥
Petersen isn鈥檛 celebrating too much yet. He鈥檚 been waiting 20 years for this, and he acknowledges that although his political contacts have indicated President Trump will sign the bill if it passes through the House of Representatives, Trump鈥檚 actions have been hard to predict. The House is expected to take up the bill after its upcoming weeklong recess, assuming the government doesn鈥檛 shut down again.