Obama abandons wilderness plan
- Thread starter Chief
- Start date
Actually a pretty smart move by Salazar and the environmentalists that pull his strings. Yea, it's nice that this policy has been reversed, but it was a small concession on their part to avoid a bigger loss that was coming in the bills before congress. In those bills, not only was this policy thrown out, but more importantly the "Wilderness Study" lands were done away with.
For those that don't know, back in the early 90s the government mandated a "road inventory". It was a screwed up deal in and of itself, but the result was a huge amount of public land, millions of acres, getting stamped as "Wilderness Study". It's defactor wilderness, managed as wilderness in the event that some day Congress wants to declare it as wilderness. If you have spent any time in the Utah back country you have seen the signs that read "Closed - Wilderness Study Area".
The bills in Congress would have required that those lands go back to pre-1990s designation which means that millions of acres and thousands of miles of single and 2 track trails would have been opened up.
But by short circuting the deal by recalling his policy, Salazar stops the bills from going forward and all of those "Wilderness Study" areas and any more that the agencies decide to designate that way continue to lock us out.
So no, I'm not going to cheer too loud.
sled_guy
For those that don't know, back in the early 90s the government mandated a "road inventory". It was a screwed up deal in and of itself, but the result was a huge amount of public land, millions of acres, getting stamped as "Wilderness Study". It's defactor wilderness, managed as wilderness in the event that some day Congress wants to declare it as wilderness. If you have spent any time in the Utah back country you have seen the signs that read "Closed - Wilderness Study Area".
The bills in Congress would have required that those lands go back to pre-1990s designation which means that millions of acres and thousands of miles of single and 2 track trails would have been opened up.
But by short circuting the deal by recalling his policy, Salazar stops the bills from going forward and all of those "Wilderness Study" areas and any more that the agencies decide to designate that way continue to lock us out.
So no, I'm not going to cheer too loud.
sled_guy
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