PUBLIC LANDS: Murkowski aims to strip roadless protection on 17M acres
Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Greenwire: Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) yesterday introduced an amendment that would likely strip roadless protections on more than 17 million acres of public lands, a proposal that drew major blowback from conservationists.
Murkowski's amendment to the chamber's Keystone XL bill seeks to thwart President Obama's move Sunday to recommend that 12 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, including the oil-rich coastal plain, be designated as wilderness.
Murkowski's legislation would prohibit the Fish and Wildlife Service from managing those lands as wilderness unless Congress acts within a year to designate them as such, a move that is highly unlikely.
The amendment would also strip roadless protections on Bureau of Land Management wilderness study areas (WSAs) that the agency has recommended be designated by Congress, unless lawmakers act on that recommendation within a year.
Conservationists say BLM has recommended that roughly 5 million acres of its 12.8 million acres of WSAs be designated as wilderness.
"Some of these areas were recommended for wilderness status in the 1980s -- and have been managed as wilderness ever since despite Congress' decision not to act on the request," said Murkowski spokesman Robert Dillon. "Senator Murkowski's amendment would simply set a deadline for designating these areas as wilderness. If Congress does nothing, the acreage would be removed from wilderness consideration after one year."
The amendment comes at time of high tensions between the Obama administration and the Alaska congressional delegation following Obama's move to protect ANWR. Murkowski yesterday said Obama "has effectively declared war on Alaska."
The ANWR move followed Interior Secretary Sally Jewell's decision in December 2013 to reject a road Murkowski badly wanted through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and as BLM negotiates what Murkowski has warned could be prohibitively expensive mitigation requirements for oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve (NPR-A) in Alaska's northwest.
Conservationists said Murkowski's new amendment is extreme.
Brian O'Donnell, executive director of the Conservation Lands Foundation, called it "the largest rollback on land conservation in decades."
He said it would lift protections for millions of acres of lands used for recreation, drinking water, hunting and fishing, wildlife habitat and sacred sites for American Indians.
"This is something I think is going to outrage people across the West," he said. "What's next, selling the Statue of Liberty for scrap metal?"
Nada Culver, an attorney for the Wilderness Society, said the amendment would strip protection from treasured landscapes based solely on Congress' failure to act.
"Quite a penalty to serve on these wild places and the American people who value them," she said.
It is not clear whether Murkowski's amendment will get a vote. The Senate last night failed to end debate on the pipeline bill, and members continue to negotiate which new amendments to put to a floor vote (see related story).
Murkowski's amendment harks back to a bill in the 112th Congress by Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) that would have stripped roadless protections on more than 40 million acres of BLM and Forest Service lands.
That bill would have required BLM to release more than 6 million acres of WSAs that the agency in the 1980s said had wilderness characteristics but recommended as not suitable for wilderness designations after considering local input, mineral potential and mining claims, among other issues.
BLM identified WSAs in 1980 under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and later identified 6.6 million acres as suitable for wilderness designation. FLPMA requires that BLM manage WSAs "in a manner so as not to impair the suitability of such areas for preservation as wilderness" until Congress says otherwise.
Murkowski's amendment would eliminate that requirement.
Murkowski yesterday also introduced a separate amendment stating that FWS may not manage ANWR's 1.5-million-acre coastal plain as a WSA without the approval of Congress.
