The Wilderness Act has protected America?s wild lands for 50 years. It is now under threat by a House bill deceptively called The Sportsmen's Heritage Act. Citizens must demand the US Senate do nothing to advance its devastating provisions.
The 1.1 million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota is the most-visited area in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Op-ed contributor Stewart Brandborg says a new House bill 'would effectively gut the Wilderness Act and protections for every wilderness in the United States? 110-million-acre National Wilderness Preservation System.' He urges the Senate to 'protect our grand wilderness legacy for future generations.'
Kevin Proescholdt/Wilderness Watch
EnlargeConservationists and wilderness enthusiasts across America are mobilizing to defeat a bill passed by the House of Representatives in April that would eviscerate the 1964 Wilderness Act.
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Deceptively entitled the Sportsmen?s Heritage Act, the bill (H.R. 4089) purports to protect hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting. The bill is being pushed by powerful groups like the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International and supported by some of the most anti-wilderness Republicans in Congress. And it would effectively gut the Wilderness Act and protections for every wilderness in America's 110-million-acre National Wilderness Preservation System ? everywhere from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota?to?the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness along the Montana-Idaho border that I can see from my home.
The House bill's provisions could still become law during the current lame-duck session of Congress. Though the Senate is considering a different sportsmen?s bill that does not include the harmful elements, the Senate bill could eventually be merged with the devastating House bill in order to pass both chambers.
The Wilderness Act eloquently defines wilderness as ?an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." The statute further designates wilderness as an area that retains ?its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation? and is ?protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions.?
I know the Wilderness Act. I worked alongside my mentor, Howard Zahniser of the Wilderness Society (the bill?s chief author and proponent), from 1956-1964 to gain its passage by Congress. After Zahniser?s untimely passing in 1964, I directed the Wilderness Society for the next 12 years in implementing the new law and in adding new areas to the National Wilderness Preservation System. Congress responded to requests from the American people by adding tens of millions of acres to the wilderness system. Today, that system has grown from the original 9 million acres in 1964 to nearly 110 million acres. The Wilderness Act provides the best and most protective standards of all types of federal public land protection.
But this great legacy of American Wilderness is essentially destroyed by H.R. 4089 in several key ways.
First, H.R. 4089 elevates hunting, fishing, shooting, and wildlife management above wilderness protection within designated wilderness areas. Visitors or wildlife managers could drive motor vehicles and build roads, cabins, dams, hunting blinds, aircraft landing strips, and much more in wildernesses if any of these activities could be rationalized as facilitating opportunities for hunting, fishing, shooting, or managing fish and wildlife.
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