WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama signed legislation Monday setting aside more than 2 million acres in nine states as protected wilderness.
Obama called the new law among the most important in decades “to protect, preserve and pass down our nation’s most treasured landscapes to future generations.”
Also in the legislation signed by Obama is a provision named for “Superman” actor Christopher Reeve that provides for paralysis research and care for persons with disabilities.
At a White House ceremony, Obama said the law guarantees that Americans “will not take our forests, rivers, oceans, national parks, monuments, and wilderness areas for granted, but rather we will set them aside and guard their sanctity for everyone to share. That’s something all Americans can support.”
The law — a collection of nearly 170 measures — represents one of the largest expansions of wilderness protection in a quarter-century. The measure confers the government’s highest level of protection on land in nine states — almost as much wilderness as designated during the past eight years combined.
Land protected by the 1,200-page law ranges from California’s Sierra Nevada and Oregon’s Mount Hood to Rocky Mountain National Park and parts of the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.
Land in Idaho’s Owyhee canyons; Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan; San Miguel County, N.M.; Zion National Park in Utah; and the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia also won wilderness protection.
In addition, more than 1,000 miles of rivers in several states, including Vermont, Massachusetts, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, California, Utah, Virginia and Idaho, were designated wild and scenic. The law expands wilderness designation — which blocks nearly all development — into areas that previously were not protected.
The law also protects land in Alaska under a contentious land swap that lets the state continue with a planned airport access road in a remote wildlife refuge near the Bering Sea. Critics call the project a “road to nowhere.”
Environmental groups and lawmakers in both parties said the law will strengthen the national park system, restore national forests, preserve wild and scenic rivers, protect battlefields and restore balance to the management of public lands.
Opponents, mostly Republicans, have called the legislation a “land grab” that would block energy development on vast swaths of federal land.
How it affects the Centennial State
The wilderness legislation signed by President Barack Obama on Monday includes at least seven provisions that affect Colorado:
• Rocky Mountain National Park: Designates nearly 250,000 acres of the park as wilderness but allows the National Park Service to battle a bark beetle infestation and fight fires.
• Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area: Designates approximately 210,000 acres of federal land on the Uncompahgre Plateau as a conservation area, including 65,000 as a wilderness area.
• Arkansas Valley Conduit: Obligates the federal government to pay 65 percent of the cost of building the 130-mile water-delivery system from Pueblo Dam to communities throughout the Arkansas River Valley.
• Jackson Gulch: Authorizes $8.25 million to rehabilitate the Jackson Gulch irrigation canal, which delivers water from Jackson Gulch Dam to residents, farms and businesses in Montezuma County.
• Baca Wildlife Refuge: Amends the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve Act to establish the purpose of the nearby Baca National Wildlife Refuge as “to restore, enhance, and maintain wetland, upland, riparian and other habitats for native wildlife, plant, and fish species in the San Luis Valley.” The law establishing the park lacked a statement of purpose for the refuge.
• Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area: Designates a heritage area in Conejos, Costilla and Alamosa counties in the San Luis Valley. Authorizes up to $10 million in matching funds to protect historic, cultural, natural and recreational resources.
• Colorado Northern Front Range Study: Directs the U.S. Forest Service to study ownership patterns in the lands in the Front Range mountain backdrop, identify areas that may be at risk of development and recommend ways to protect them.
The Associated Press
