Today the Senate voted 85-14 for cloture on the public lands deal that is part of the House-passed National Defense Authorization Act. Ten right-wing Republicans were joined by Democratic Senators Jeff Merkeley (OR), Ron Wyden (OR), and Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) and Independent Bernie Sanders (VT) in opposing inclusion of the package.
Greenwire (sub) has the summary:
The Senate this morning voted 85-14 to advance a major package of parks, wilderness and land development bills as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, setting up a final vote on the $585 billion measure no later than tomorrow.
The procedural vote ended debate on the motion to concur in the House-passed bill.
The cloture vote was necessary because Republican senators including Tom Coburn of Oklahoma had objected to including parks and wilderness bills in a defense bill. The lands package was assembled by the Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources and the House Natural Resources panels.
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NDAA would designate nearly 250,000 acres of wilderness in Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington state and Montana; withdraw hundreds of thousands of acres from mineral development; establish or expand more than a dozen national park units; and protect about 140 miles of rivers.
While the land package has been praised for its expansion of wilderness, rivers, and parks, it has also been severely criticized for its secret deals to give public land to mining companies in Arizona and Nevada, open up the Tongass National Forest to clearcutting, expedite grazing, oil and gas permits, and undermine the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act.
The High Country News says
it’s decidedly a mixed bag – with one hand, it adds about 250,000 acres of designated wilderness, while with the other hand, it transfers 110,000 acres into private ownership. It creates half a dozen new national parks, but appropriates no extra money to run them. It gives one Indian tribe more control over land, while taking sacred sites away from another tribe. It protects hundreds of thousands of acres from mining and drilling, but tells the Bureau of Land Management to fast-track grazing and energy permits.
Despite the significant and painful compromises, most big green groups see the bill as an overall win, especially given prior Congressional inaction on conservation bills. But nearly 50 other environmental organizations, including WildEarth Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity, think it’s a net loss, and have sent a letter to Congress requesting that the lands measures be stripped from the defense bill.
[Among the other groups signing the letter were Greenpeace, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, WildWest Institute, Californians for Western Wilderness, Wild Utah Project, Living Rivers and Colorado Waterkeeper, Wilderness Watch, Klamath Forest Alliance, Western Lands Project, and others.]
Their letter said, in part, that the bill would
"result in a net loss of wildland and wildlife protection on tens of millions of acres of public land. The provisions would undermine some of our nation's preeminent environmental and public lands laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act ( NEPA) and the Wilderness Act, would give landscapes deemed sacred by Native American tribes to a foreign-owned mining company, and would diminish the federal estate held in trust for all Americans..."
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Aside from objecting to the trading of National Forest land in Arizona considered sacred by Native American tribes in order to expedite copper mining by Resolution Copper, and the Sealaska giveaway of 70,000 acres of the Tongass National Forest, the letter objected to the automatic renewals of livestock grazing permits "even where grazing operations are degrading wildlife habitat and fouling streams and rivers" without evaluation under NEPA, and imperiling the sage grouse and likely hasten the need for its protection under the Endangered Species Act. It also objected to a stealth provision removing existing Wilderness Study Area (WSA) protections for two areas in eastern Montana, whose protections had never been the subject of legislation or public consideration before.
Nevertheless, despite these and other objections, the land deal will be in the final bill, with a vote expected as early as Friday.
From the summary by High Country News:
Here’s a listing of some of the major public-lands proposals in the defense bill.
LAND TRANSFERS
Transfer more than 2,000 acres of public land in Arizona to mining giant Rio Tinto for the Resolution Copper mine, a deal the company has pursued for a decade. In return, the company would convey 5,000 acres to the federal government. But the land where the mine would be located contains sites sacred to the San Carlos Apache, and they and environmental groups oppose the swap, which failed two previous votes in the Senate.
Transfer 70,000 acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to the Sealaska corporation (made up of Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian Natives), mostly for logging and development. But more than 150,000 acres in the Tongass would be conserved for salmon habitat and wildlife.
Return 5,000 acres of coal reserves to Montana’s Northern Cheyenne tribe, which they lost to a surveying error in 1900. The current owner, Great Northern Properties, would in exchange be able to mine outside of the tribe’s land. Another 932 acres of tribally owned land would be placed in trust (but omitted is 635 acres near Bear Butte, a sacred site, that was included in an earlier version of this act).
WILDERNESS
Rocky Mountain Front: 275,000 acres of public land protected in western Montana, including 67,000 acres added to the Bob Marshall and Scapegoat Wildernesses (this would be the state’s first new wilderness in 30 years). At the same time, though, wilderness study area protections would be released on 14,000 acres in southeast Montana, and other wilderness study areas would be assessed for oil and gas extraction.
Columbine-Hondo Wilderness: 45,000 acres in the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico.
Alpine Lakes Wilderness: Expands that 394,000-acre Washington state wilderness by 22,100 acres, and designates sections of the Middle Fork Snoqualmie and Pratt Rivers as “Wild and Scenic.”
Hermosa Creek: Protects the 108,000-acre Hermosa Creek Watershed in the San Juan National Forest in southwest Colorado.
Wovoka Wilderness: 48,000 acres in Lyon County, Nevada. Also transfers 12,500 acres to the town of Yerington for economic development around a copper mine.
Pine Forest Range Wilderness: 26,000 acres in northwest Nevada.
NATIONAL PARKS
The National Parks Traveler summarizes the parks-related parts of the bill, which include:
Create the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
Designate the Coltsville National Historical Park in Connecticut.
Attach a preserve of 4,070 acres to Oregon Caves National Monument.
Establish Tule Springs National Monument near Las Vegas to preserve ancient fossils.
Transfer the 90,000-acre Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico from the U.S. Forest Service to the National Park Service.
Expand Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi.
Consider historical designation for the trail of the African American Buffalo Soldiers, sent from San Francisco to guard the newly created Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks in the early 1900s.
Require the NPS to study other sites to possibly include in the park system.
Prevent the NPS from giving donors naming rights to parks or facilities, endorsing the donor or their products or services, or calling them “official sponsors.” And for the NPS Centennial in 2016, the treasury will mint special collector’s coins that will raise money for the National Park Foundation.
Groups such as the National Parks Conservation Association are elated at what they're calling a "monumental" expansion of the parks system, as are communities and businesses near the new units.
The National Parks Traveler notes, though, that all those new and expanded parks require more money to operate – and the bill provides no new funding...
OTHER PROVISIONS
The Grazing Improvement Act would automatically extend grazing permits on public lands from 10 to 20 years, and allow those permits to be renewed even before environmental review is complete. This provision, says conservation groups, will further degrade the sagebrush plains that the greater sage grouse depends on, thwarting its conservation and increasing the need to list it under the Endangered Species Act. (The “Cromnibus” spending agreement would further harm grouse by preventing Interior from putting Gunnison sage grouse or greater sage grouse on the endangered species list.) And this version of the grazing act omits provisions that would have allowed voluntary retirement of grazing permits in Oregon and New Mexico.
The Cabin Fee Act would put an upper limit on federal fees charged to lease cabins in national forests.
A BLM pilot program to speed up the process for oil and gas permits would become permanent.
Irrigation districts would be allowed to develop hydropower on Bureau of Reclamation ditches and canals.