Last week, President Obama signed the biggest public lands protection bill in decades.
The following information came to me in an email from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
This milestone legislation includes more than 160 separate bills relating to public lands, national parks, historic sites and battlefields, conservation and wilderness designation, national heritage areas and corridors, and historic trails.
"This action by Congress creates the first major system of U.S. public lands in nearly a half century," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "And, it could well be the last one ever created. Its importance can't be overstated."
Highlights of the legislation include:
- National Landscape Conservation System Act: establishes a new system of public lands that will protect some 26 million acres of American heritage, comprising the best lands, waterways and cultural resources managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, working with The Wilderness Society and a coalition of more than eighty groups, has spearheaded the effort over the past several years to make this 866-unit system permanent.
- Save America's Treasures Act: establishes an authorization under which the amounts available shall be used by the Secretary of the Interior to provide grants to eligible entities for projects to preserve nationally-significant collections and historic properties.
- Preserve America Act: establishes an authorization under which the Secretary of the Interior may provide competitive grants to specified entities to support preservation efforts through heritage tourism, education and historic preservation planning activities.
Learn more about this landmark legislation on the PreservationNation Blog.
Read the President's statement about the importance of public lands.
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Comments: 20
Another one of the bills in the package -- the National Landscape Conservation System Act -- will provide permanent protection for the first new system of conservation lands in the United States in more than 50 years. Under the National Landscape Conservation System Act, over 850 federally recognized areas covering 27 million acres of the Bureau of Land Management's most spectacular land and waters will be protected permanently.
Some 80% of the western states are now government owned which prevents people from working/using those lands. These land grabs are wrong and since we can't protect or manage them I no longer see the point in expanding them. What was once a great idea seems now more bent on restricting people in those areas from doing anything other than existing. There is little reason to celebrate this as now most activities on those lands will be illegal and unmanageable.
But Charles raises a good point. We also need the funds to staff and manage these places. Since these sites tend to be isolated and if they are not watched, people begin to dump trash on them, ruin their ecosystems with snowmobiles, etc.
Listen to this thin foil hat wingnut. You want to put drilling rigs on that land. LOL.