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Here is the article on USA today.I have also posted it. This is serious.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...lderness_N.htm
2 million acres up for 'wilderness' designation
WILDERNESS PROTECTION
A bill up for a House vote today would add wilderness areas in nine states (in acres):
California: 700,634
Idaho: 517,000
Utah: 260,000
Colorado: 250,000
Oregon: 201,300
Virginia: 43,000
West Virginia: 37,771
New Mexico: 16,000
Michigan: 11,739
WASHINGTON — Congress is on the brink of barring all development on huge swaths of forest and desert in nine states, in what would be the most sweeping land-protection law in 15 years.
Land-preservation advocates, such as Paul Spitler of the Wilderness Society, say the bill's passage may usher in a new era of wilderness protection.
"We're likely to see new wilderness legislation for years to come," Spitler says. "This is the start of a wave here."
The House of Representatives is set to vote today on a bill to declare more than 2 million acres of public land to be official "wilderness." That means no logging, mining, or vehicles, not even mountain bikes, are allowed.
Passage is "fairly likely," says Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff, whose boss, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, plans to be at the Capitol today to celebrate.
The bill would then go to President Obama.
Some of the land that would receive wilderness status lies within national parks. Other parcels are federal forestland or rangeland that lack stringent protections.
Among the areas that would be protected:
•Idaho's Owyhee Canyonlands, vast prairies cut by deep river canyons.
•Oregon's Mount Hood, including old-growth forests.
•West Virginia's Roaring Plains, a high plateau clothed in spruce groves and bogs.
The approval of the bill would be a boon for backpackers but a disappointment to the millions of Americans who like to see wild places via mountain bike, snowmobile or four-wheel-drive truck, which are all barred from entering wilderness areas.
"We're sick of condos, same as the environmental groups," says Brian Hawthorne of the BlueRibbon Coalition, which backs motorized recreation. "We want to conserve these public lands but we want the recreational uses there to be maintained."
The bill would also place off-limits reserves of oil and gas in a half-dozen wilderness areas, drawing the ire of some congressional Republicans, including Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee.
"When the federal government shuts down energy production here in America, we're sending good-paying jobs overseas," Hastings said on the House floor this month during debate before an earlier vote.
Congress has not set aside such a large amount of wilderness since 1994, when it passed legislation to protect millions of acres of California desert. That bill was passed shortly before the Democrats lost control of Congress.
The Democrats regained control of the House and Senate after the 2006 elections and consolidated their gains in November, making it easier to overcome opposition to wilderness bills.
Lawmakers who back the bill say support is growing for land preservation.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, says she's "optimistic" that Congress can make "a fresh start with public lands legislation and find a way to find consensus on these types of bills."
Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., has said he's likely to introduce a bill to establish wilderness in southern Arizona. Another bill introduced last month by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., would declare new wilderness in five Western states
