He then dropped that idea, and in November the Interior Department instead identified 18 backcountry areas — where local residents generally support greater federal protection — that Congress might consider classifying as wilderness. Congress has taken no action on the proposal, and there has been little obvious pressure from the administration to do so.
Salazar said the administration’s “America’s Great Outdoors” initiative had identified several key landscapes — including the Flint Hills in Kansas and Florida’s Everglades — and has worked with the private sector to protect them.
“On all of those landscapes, we have made herculean progress,” he said.
Salazar has also approved plans to create five new national wildlife refuges and expand six others — allowing hunting, fishing and other recreation activities — for a total of 3.3 million acres. Separately, Forest Service officials have struck a deal with Colorado to keep 4.2 million acres of forest land there roadless, with a quarter of the land receiving higher protection than under rules enacted under Clinton.
‘Wilderness characteristics’
Some groups say the administration is getting around Congress by using a “wilderness characteristics” label for tracts of public land, meaning they might have the potential to be designated wilderness later. Republicans and many of their allies say such land should not be treated differently from other public land until it is declared wilderness; the administration and environmentalists say it deserves some interim protection.
“Instead of ‘wild lands,’ they’re saying ‘wilderness characteristics,’ ” said Wayne Allard, the American Motorcyclist Association’s vice president of government relations, who served as a Republican senator from Colorado from 1997 to 2009. “There’s not really any distinction in my mind or in the minds of many who use public lands.”
Dustin Van Liew, who directs the Public Lands Council for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, calls this approach “de facto wilderness” that limits ranchers’ activities, though these moves lack the same permanent and legal force of wilderness designations.
Both sides, including Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Interior Department, say the political climate makes it hard to enact new lands protections. Simpson said that Congress will probably move some sort of public lands bill after the November election or early next year but that “whether or not that package will include additional wilderness bills is difficult to predict at this time.”
Kristen Brengel, who directs legislative and government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, said the administration has not spoken out forcefully enough to resist proposals that could erode existing protections, such as a House-passed bill that would expand hunting and fishing in national parks and other public lands. A legal analysis commissioned by the group shows the measure could allow wildlife collection, battlefield reenactments and paintball games in parks, along with off-road vehicle use in areas awaiting a possible wilderness designation.
The Interior Department submitted written testimony opposing the bill, but Brengel said that “these agencies need to speak up and say, ‘You’re gutting the Wilderness Act. You’re gutting the National Park Service Organic Act. Without saying that, it’s empty.”
This month, a group of more than 1,100 Westerners who were supporters and campaign volunteers for Obama in 2008 launched a drive called “It’s Monumental,” urging him to create five national monuments in places where these proposals already have broad local support out West.
John D. Podesta, who served as White House chief of staff from 1998 to 2001, said Clinton always “loved the outdoors” but came to embrace the idea more forcefully as he traveled the country and established new protections for public land. “You get goose bumps in these places, and you know you’re preserving them — literally — for generations. And Clinton was just very into it,” Podesta said. “This is the thing that the president loved.” He added that there’s been “little bandwidth in the White House to think about this” during Obama’s term.
“I think if they can create a process that engages the president in both thinking about what the stakes are for the country and posterity, and then getting out there and touching and feeling it,” he said, “I think he could get very into it.”
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