Proposals for six new wilderness areas are on their way to the House floor after the Natural Resources Committee easily cleared them yesterday.
The bills, all cleared by voice vote, were replaced with substitutes that incorporated several technical changes at the behest of federal officials and the bills' different stakeholders. The substitute version of Rep. Tom Udall's (D-N.M.) H.R. 2632, for example, reduces the amount of land proposed for the Sabinoso Wilderness Area in northeast New Mexico from 19,880 acres to 15,995 acres.
Parks Subcommittee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said the substitute was the product of several months of negotiations between the Bureau of Land Management, Udall and different stakeholders to address concerns about the proposed wilderness area. The substitute also allows for continued land inholdings in the wilderness area.
Four other wilderness areas would be formed by Rep. Mary Bono Mack's (R-Calif.), H.R. 3682, which would protect Interior Department and Forest Service land that is home to the threatened bighorn sheep, bald eagle, desert tortoise and other species. In addition to the new areas, it would add land to six existing areas and the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument.
Another 41,000 acres of Joshua Tree National Park would be labeled "potential wilderness" until the National Park Service settles property claims, at which point they would become true wilderness areas. Thirty-one miles of rivers would also be labeled "wild and scenic." The designation would encompass sections of the North Fork San Jacinto River, Fuller Mill Creek, Palm Canyon Creek and Bautista Creek.
H.R. 3022 from Reps. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) would create the John Krebs Wilderness in the California's Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park.
The Krebs wilderness would be about 70,000 acres in the Mineral King valley, the site Krebs helped add to the national park in 1978 after the Walt Disney Co. attempted to build a ski area there. Krebs, then a Democratic congressman from Fresno, Calif., lost his subsequent re-election attempt.
The bill would also add an additional 43,500 acres to an existing wilderness area within the park.
Fossils and Indian affairs
The committee also cleared H.R. 554, which would direct Interior to develop guidelines for the inventory and monitoring of paleontological resources on federal lands using scientific principles and expertise. It passed the Senate during the 109th Congress.
The bill would make it a crime to extract paleontological resources such as fossils from federal lands without a permit issued by the Interior Secretary but does make an exception for "casual collecting" of common invertebrate and plant fossils for non-commercial use.
The Bush administration had previously stated that existing laws already covered paleontological resources, but Grijalva noted that the legislation only covers resources not already covered by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
The panel also approved H.R. 5680, which would amend certain laws relating to Native Americans.