Daily Wilderness News Clips

Washington is set to get its first new wilderness area in more than two decades with House passage Tuesday of legislation that would protect more than 106,000 acres of forests and salmon-bearing streams from motorists and loggers.

Supporters expect President Bush to sign the bill into law, creating the Wild Sky Wilderness Area between Index and Stevens Pass in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

The House's 291-117 vote on the measure containing Wild Sky caps a nine-year push in Congress to designate the wilderness area. The Senate passed the measure April 10.

The final vote could come Tuesday on a proposal to create a wilderness area known as Wild Sky.

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to consider a package of bills dealing with federal properties, including the one that would establish the 106,000-acre wilderness north of Index in eastern Snohomish County.

Also included in the package is a bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, which would give national park status to the site on Bainbridge Island from which the first Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps during World War II.

I was surprised to read in your April 6 story regarding wilderness that the Mineral County commissioner thought that changes, meaning designated wilderness, would somehow negatively impact the local economy. What is that based on?

It was clear in the article that discussions on which areas should be designated as wilderness are ongoing and no decisions have been made. Given that wilderness provides great opportunities for a variety of outdoor recreation pursuits, how would that hurt?

Roy and Betsy Miller cringed at the sight of fresh vehicle ruts that left a zig-zag scar on what had been a picturesque Mojave Desert hill off a dirt road that leads to the historic mining town of Gold Butte.

"This area was pristine and untouched as it had been for thousands of years," Roy Miller said on a back-roads trip this month, recalling how only a few days before there were no ruts on the hill.

"On the other side there are motorcycle tracks that go up and down," he said. "There are dozens and dozens of examples like that out here."

The House is expected to vote on a massive public lands package tomorrow that includes a variety of wilderness, heritage area and water project bills the Senate was unable to pass individually.

S. 2739 is a package of 62 public lands bills previously approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, some as early as the beginning of last year.

The bill will be considered under a suspension of the rules, meaning no amendments may be offered and a two-thirds majority is required for passage.

A "very vigorous campaign" is under way to protect the Rocky Mountain Front, including an effort to add more acreage to the Bob Marshall Wilderness, the head of the state's oldest and largest wilderness advocacy group said Friday.

"We don't have a piece of legislation drafted yet, but we're working on it," said Tim Baker, executive director of the Montana Wilderness Association.

The Front, which stretches 150 miles north to south from Marias Pass to Rogers Pass, abuts 1.5 million acres of wilderness.

The debate over how to manage growth and preserve public lands in Utah has been wedged in a stalemate for decades. The Washington County Growth and Conservation Act of 2008 is the compromise that breaks the impasse and strikes a balance between conservation and growth.

The wilderness debate in Utah is characterized by a lot of rhetoric but very little progress. With this bill, conservation groups that once opposed our efforts are now endorsing the 2008 legislation recognizing the great strides taken to protect wilderness.

A national wilderness group has listed Chestnut Ridge on the Allegheny National Forest as one of the nation's "Ten Natural Treasures in Trouble."

The report lists oil and gas production as the major threat.

Chestnut Ridge is a 5,191-acre area surrounding the headwaters of Indian Run, in the northern section of the forest, east of Rt. 321 and north of Rt. 59.

Environmentalists, along with local and federal officials, all have problems with the Washington County lands bill.

Despite those problems, they also all still like the latest version versus the one proposed in 2006, they explained before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

The Washington County Growth and Conservation Act of 2008, which Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, introduced in the Senate earlier this month, designates wilderness areas in the county but also allows for the sale of certain areas of public lands, with a percentage of the revenue going back to the county.

A bipartisan group of 10 senators is trying to jump-start stalled efforts in Congress to update the 19th century law that governs hard-rock mining, the second leading industry in Nevada.

In a letter this week to Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the senators called for a "fair and equitable" tax, or royalty, on mining revenues.