Oregon: Wilderness bill comes crashing through…
Drawing the ire of environmentalists who’ve been outspoken in other
posts, here’s the latest in US Wilderness. –Editor, Forest Policy
Research
Crashing through a barrier that has blocked a popular lands bill for
more than a year, the Senate on Sunday voted overwhelming in favor of
legislation that would permanently protect more than 200,000 acres of
threatened land near Mount Hood and other Oregon locations. The 66-12
vote on a rare weekend session cleared the way for final passage later
this week of a sprawling public lands bill that extends formal
wilderness status and protection to more than 2 million acres of
federal land in Oregon and eight other states.
The legislation, which
combined 164 separate bills that had earned unanimous or
near-unanimous approval by the Senate Energy Committee is the largest
expansion of wilderness protection in 25 years. It has bipartisan
support and would include California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range,
Oregon’s Mount Hood, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and
parts of the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia. “After five years
and well over a hundred meetings the Senate has finally overcome the
procedural hurdles that have delayed action to safeguard some of
Oregon’s most special places.” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said.
“Countless Oregonians, including Senator Gordon Smith, worked
tirelessly and in a bipartisan fashion to protect these natural
treasures which define Oregon as one of the most beautiful states in
the union,” he said. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., noted that the
sprawling bill was almost equally divided between bills sponsored by
Democrats and Republicans. Wyden alone was sponsor of seven. But it
has been blocked by objections from Republican Sen. Tom Coburn,
R-Okla., who said adding more public land is too costly, would affect
people’s property rights and hamper development of oil and gas
reserves. Coburn punctuated his objections by launch a filibuster
against the bill last year that Democrats could not overcome until
Sunday. Among dozens of other provisions, the bill carries several
that a widely popular in Oregon and which have been a high priority of
Sen. Ron Wyden.
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/01/senate_votes_to_increase_prote.html
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