Oregon: Wilderness bill to try and get thru again

Again Congress begins the age-old routine of getting wilderness bills
turned to law. The catch is these days instead of land just being
divided up as industrial vs. wilderness there’s instead a new
designation process by which those who seek to destroy wilderness are
given unjust concessions like land exchanges, exemptions from
environmental protections, vehicle rights, cattle grazing, farming,
hunting, logging. Yep it’s true, all the things that make wilderness
great are on the table in modern-day wilderness designations. The
devil’s in the the details of these proposed designations. In other
words wilderness ain’t really wilderness anymore! –Deane

The lands bill, reintroduced Wednesday by the chairman of the Energy
and Natural Resources Committee, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., combines
more than 150 bills to expand wilderness areas and protect other
federal lands.

The Oregon items are: 1) The Lewis and Clark Mount Hood
Wilderness Act of 2007, which protects areas around Mount Hood
including almost 127,000 acres of Wilderness and adds 79 miles on nine
free-flowing stretches of rivers to the National Wild and Scenic River
System. 2) The Copper Salmon Wilderness Act, which protects the
headwaters of the North Fork of the Elk River and would add 13,700
acres of new wilderness and designate 9.3 miles of Wild and Scenic
Rivers. 3) The Oregon Badlands Wilderness Act of 2008, which would
designate as Wilderness almost 30,000 acres of the area just east of
Bend known as the Badlands. 4) The Cascade Siskiyou National Monument
Voluntary and Equitable Grazing Conflict Resolution Act, which would
establish a 23,000-acre Soda Mountain Wilderness and authorizes the
permanent retirement of grazing allotments within the monument. 5) The
Spring Basin Wilderness Act of 2008, which would designate
approximately 8,600 acres as the Spring Basin Wilderness.
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/01/senate_plans_early_push_to_add.html

— Posted to http://forestpolicyresearch.com via gmail to posterous and
also to forestpolicyresearch@yahoogroups.com

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