In what could be the Senate’s first vote of the new Congress, lawmakers are considering setting aside more than 2 million acres in nine states as wilderness.
The largest expansion of wilderness protection in 25 years 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.
The bill, a holdover from last year, has bipartisan support. Yet it is causing friction that threatens to spoil pledges by Senate leaders to work cooperatively as a new administration takes office.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has pledged to filibuster. He says the spending in the bill is excessive — nearly $4 billion over five years — and that the measure calls for removing millions of acres of federal property from oil and gas development. The Associated Press
