Dear EarthTalk: I understand there is an effort underway to allow all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, motorbikes, motorboats and other motorized vehicles into wilderness areas, which would overturn a long-standing ban. What’s behind this?—Harry Schilling, Tempe, Ariz.

A new bill making its way through Congress, the Recreational Fishing and Hunting Heritage and Opportunities Act (H.R. 2834), aims to make federally managed public lands across millions of acres of Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management property more accessible to hunters and anglers. And a key element of the bill calls for allowing motorized vehicles and equipment—as long as they are used for hunting or fishing—into these areas. Leading green groups are outraged because this would undermine 1964’s Wilderness Act which expressly bans motor vehicles on these last wild vestiges of untrammeled American land.

According to the non-profit Wilderness Society, the motorized vehicles provision “would result in the destruction of the very wilderness values that millions of American hunters and anglers cherish.”

“The practical effect could be to open all designated wilderness areas to all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, motorbikes, motorboats, chainsaws and other motorized vehicles and equipment…” warns Wilderness Society president William Meadows in a letter to Congress. He adds that buildings, towers and temporary roads could even be built in currently pristine stretches of wilderness if the proposed bill becomes law.

But what’s most troubling to Meadows and others is language in the bill saying that “any requirements imposed by [the Wilderness Act] shall be implemented only insofar as they facilitate or enhance the original primary purpose or purposes for which the federal public lands or land unit was established and do not materially interfere with or hinder such purpose or purposes.” Meadows fears this could be construed to allow road building, timber cutting, mining, oil and gas drilling and other development in our remaining wilderness areas.

Another beef environmentalists have with the bill is that it would exempt decisions made or actions taken with regard to hunting and fishing on federal lands from federal environmental review and public disclosure regulations established under 1969’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Wilderness Society reports that this part of H.R. 2834 would keep the public and concerned parties out of decisions to compromise the integrity of wilderness but also other types of protected lands.

First introduced in the house last September by Michigan Republican Dan Benishek (with 45 bi-partisan co-sponsors), H.R. 2834 made it through the House Natural Resources Committee within three months and is poised for a full House vote later this spring. If it passes there, the Senate will take up a companion version, S. 2066, sponsored by Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin. Depending on how it plays out, the bill could be on the President’s desk by the summer.

“Recreational fishing and hunting are important and vital recreational activities on our federal public lands,” concludes the Wilderness Society, “but the anti-Wilderness provisions of H.R. 2834 should not be allowed to become law.”

CONTACTS: H.R. 2834, www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr2834; Wilderness Society, www.wilderness.org.

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

8 Comments

1. 1. jctyler 10:38 AM 9/4/12

   stupidity in motion

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2. 2. Dolmance 10:54 AM 9/4/12

   At this very moment I am surrounded by what four days ago used to be wilderness, and which looks now like the surface of the moon, with fires still burning up the mountains. The air is filled with smoke and there's dead animals everywhere.
   
   And that's what you're going to see a lot more of if this stupid law being considered by a Congress filled with crazy people is allowed to get away with.

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3. 3. Sisko in reply to Dolmance 11:24 AM 9/4/12

   Your fear seems to exceed the actual risk

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4. 4. BWTrainer 11:49 AM 9/4/12

   While it may benefit hunters and anglers, I can assure you the vast majority of us don't want it. There may be some outfitters (guides) who want to use trucks and ATVs to take lazy people out into the wilderness, but by and large sportsmen are content with the system how it is.

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5. 5. lamorpa 12:23 PM 9/4/12

   The headline is incorrect. It is supposed to read:
   
   Congress Considering Bill to Allow Motorized Vehicles into What Were, up to This Point, Wilderness Areas
   
   (but no longer are)

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6. 6. dicklipke 12:23 PM 9/4/12

   This would make it so much easier for the common family to take their electric generators, portable TVs with the ability to play games and movies on CD's,boom boxes,water beds,refrigerators,portable potties,barbeque pits,all the necessities for a family to enjoy nature and the great outdoors.Yes,yes a little needed family bonding.
   What a great ideas Congress can come up with to help us forget about all those jobless Americans until after those troublesome elections coming up in November are over.
   After that wise and masterful idea they deserve another vacation themselves.
   

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7. 7. dieselpop1 06:26 PM 9/4/12

   I'm handicapped and a senior citizen. Why should millions and millions of acres be set aside solely for those who can hike or bicycle into these areas.

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8. 8. kallen 04:55 PM 9/5/12

   What goes around comes around or should I say karma? So-called environmentalists have been kicking the public out of public lands since the passing of the Wilderness Act. They constantly whine, complain and then sue when forest management plans do not go their way. For example, right now trail users are fighting 77% trail closures in north-western New Mexican forests (and this isn't an isolated case) and yet 77% is not enough for them (Sierra Club, Wilderness Society etc); they want all the trails and public access shut down and they're using their deep pockets to do it (sounds like the oil companies eh?). We in the trail advocacy camp, who believe that to preserve nature one needs to appreciate it and to appreciate it one needs to interact with it and critically, trails are the interfaces that makes that possible, well, we also call ourselves environmentalists and we have tried compromise but that is a dirty word to them and so you see, this legislation is poetic justice if their ever was. It's their extremist views that caused Gore (via the Roadless initiative) to loose against numb-nuts Bush and its certainly their current extremist agenda that may help Romney get elected (disclaimer - I don't support either of the bozos). In the end, the liberals are just as dogmatic as the conservatives; neither, to the detriment of all, will compromise.
   
   

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