An editorial from the New York Times outlines the ulterior motives behind recent Congressional designations of millions of acres of land to be permanent wilderness.

True Wilderness, and False - New York Times: "Under the radar, Congress has been quietly adding to the nation’s inventory of protected wilderness. In three bills approved by both houses and signed by President Bush, the 109th Congress has awarded wilderness designation to 11,000 acres of canyonland and desert in New Mexico, 10,000 acres of rain forest in Puerto Rico and 100,000 acres in the Cedar Mountains of Utah.

Four more wilderness bills have cleared one house or the other, and when approved will add another 750,000 acres of wilderness in California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. More such bills are waiting in the Congressional wings.

The Wilderness Act of 1964 prohibits all commercial activity — roads, buildings, logging, drilling — in areas designated as wilderness, the highest level of protection given to any public lands, including the national parks. Congress has designated roughly 106 million acres as permanent wilderness, more than half of it in Alaska.


This is not to say that all wilderness bills are free of low motives and commercial intent. One particularly distasteful example is a bill introduced by Senator Robert Bennett and Representative Jim Matheson of Utah. It would sell off 40 square miles of federal land to private developers in Washington County, the fifth-fastest-growing county in the country and already something of a monument to suburban sprawl and strip development. In exchange, it offers wilderness protection to about 220,000 acres.

Wilderness bills often involve land swaps — small amounts of land for commercial purposes in exchange for lots more permanent wilderness — and the Utah deal would seem to fit the pattern. It doesn’t. First, about half the proposed wilderness is already protected. Second, some of the proceeds would go not for local conservation projects but for off-road vehicle trails and, most alarming, for a 120-mile pipeline to draw water from Lake Powell, which is already stressed by undisciplined development. Third, there has been little public input. Finally, there appears to be plenty of private land available to satisfy the county’s insatiable needs.

This is, in short, a raid on national resources aimed at helping private developers. It is the worst sort of Congressional earmarking. And it gives true wilderness bills a reputation they do not deserve.
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