Wilderness Designation Trade-Offs Faulted By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer
Congress is on the verge of approving half a dozen bills that would protect as much as 1 million acres of wilderness areas across the West, but the move has infuriated environmentalists who charge that lawmakers are giving away too much pristine public land to real estate developers and local communities in the process.
If lawmakers finish work on the legislation before adjourning — several bills have passed the House already and a Senate hearing is scheduled for Wednesday — it would amount to the largest designation of new wilderness areas in a decade. But advocates and critics are in a bitter fight over the trade-offs, with opponents saying the public is paying too high a price. …
The new legislative approach reflects a simple political reality: Republican congressional leaders will accept new wilderness areas only if they come with these kinds of trade-offs. Wilderness designations have often been difficult to push through Congress because they are more restrictive than national forest or park designations, and bar man-made structures or roads within their confines.
There is no logical reason to expand wilderness boundaries. Wilderness boundaries restrict many people from accessing certain areas which should be availible to all. In addition, expanding wilderness boundaries would have a negative impact on timber sales and grazing lease revenue, which is a considerable part of our local economy.
Logic isn’t absolute. It IS logical to expand boundaries to protect more land from abuse or to expand the safe haven wilderness provides wild things. Wilderness can be too small. As for the economy, blacksmiths and wheelwrights once were a mainstay of the economy. Things change. There is much money to be made from eco-tourists, if money matters more than preservation. mjh