Comment Against the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009

During a special session called by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) last Sunday, January 11, the first full Senate vote of the 111th Congress led to the passage the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (S 22) last Thursday by a vote of 73 to 21, a larger margin than expected. The Senate has sent this colossal public lands package to the House of Representatives, who may easily pass it this Tuesday or Wednesday. The act contains over 160 individual public lands bills and has drawn undeserved praise from many conservation organizations as a victory for wilderness designation, "an opportunity to enact the greatest expansion of the National Wilderness Preservation System in 15 years" (Campaign for America’s Wilderness). With supposedly broad, bipartisan support for its separate bills, this legislation would nominally protect more than two million acres of national public lands as wilderness, heritage, or conservation areas in nine states including California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia. Along with special designations for federal lands in such places as Mount Hood, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the Owyhee-Bruneau Canyonlands in southwestern Idaho, the omnibus bill would also add hundreds of miles of nine free-flowing rivers to the National Wild and Scenic River System.

Like the Idaho Roadless Rule, Senate Bill 22 appears to protect large swaths of public lands and waters but contains many insidious measures that contradict its seemingly honorable objectives to "preserve key components of America’s natural heritage and provide important economic benefits to struggling local economies" (Campaign for America’s Wilderness). For the duration of the 110th Congress, Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) leveraged the Senate’s procedural rules to prevent any of the separate bills comprising this omnibus legislation from coming to the floor. The Senate could not overcome the 60 vote margin required to break a filibuster, and the act became nicknamed the "Tomnibus" bill after Dr. Coburn. Its resurgence in the Senate this year elicited this response from Senator Coburn:

"The decision by Senate leaders to kick off the new Congress with an earmark-laden omnibus lands bill makes a mockery of voters’ hopes for change. This package represents some of the worst aspects of congressional incompetence and parochialism."

Dr. Coburn was not alone in his adamant opposition to the omnibus act last year. Conservative special interests refute the bill because it would withdraw over three million acres from oil and natural gas exploration and extraction, remove the potential of some public lands for commercial and private use and ownership, require ten billion dollars in new government spending, transfer more land to the federal government, and even supposedly restrict private property rights. Grassroots conservationists in the Northern Rockies believe that those provisions are the only commendable dynamics of this enormous bill. But many other Americans would like to block this legislation, or at least debate its multitude of provisions on an individual basis. Despite the perhaps undefeatable support of many states like Oregon with federal lands at stake, according to Coburn’s staff:

"More than 100 organizations ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the National Wildlife Refuge Association have expressed their opposition to this package due to its wasteful earmarks, anti-conservation provisions, and anti-domestic energy production measures. In addition, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service has released a report calling the bill ‘controversial.’"

Friends of the Clearwater urges you to contact your congressperson in the House of Representatives and ask them to vote against the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009. Although this bill seems to designate some new wilderness and other protected areas, it contains many problematic provisions that would result in a net loss for wild public lands. As Northern Rockies activist Steve Kelly recently noted:

"The price (subsidies/sweeteners) paid for "protection" in most, if not all, of the bills in the omnibus package is greater than the sum of the "rocks and ice" included in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Market-solution wilderness has been a grave strategic and tactical mistake: it’s the special-interest gift that keeps on giving. Take any one of these bills, read the fine print, and accept another defeat. Please note that Montana did not fall for this ploy – yet. This is not a wilderness victory!"

Examine more closely, for instance, two bills embedded in the omnibus legislation. The Owyhee Public Lands Management Act purportedly protects 517,000 acres of wild high desert country and 315 miles of the Owyhee River in southwestern Idaho. The outcome of years of collaborative capitulations by local citizens, elected officials, and interest groups coached by Idaho Senator Mike Crapo (R) through the Owyhee Initiative, this proposal and negotiation process also received the support of Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), author of the state petition that conceived Idaho Roadless Rule. The Owyhee lands bill contains many provisions for private/public land exchanges that favor ranchers and release almost 200,000 acres of wilderness study areas to multiple uses. Many grassroots conservation groups in the area opposed this bill for its excessive special-interest trade-offs and diluted protective language.

Among the most contested of the myriad lands bills in the omnibus act, the Izembek and Alaska Peninsula Refuge and Wilderness Enhancement Act would provide three million dollars to build an unnecessary road through the wilderness core of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. In exchange for Alaskan Native corporation and state lands with less critical wildlife habitat, the bill would remove the "road to nowhere" and approximately 206 acres of surrounding, fragile, coastal land not only from wilderness designation but from public ownership. The international scientific community recognizes the potentially impacted Lagoons Complex, with some of the largest eelgrass beds in the world, as globally significant wetland habitat for countless migratory birds, waterfowl, fish, and marine mammals, including a threatened sea otter population. Congress rejected a similar proposal in 1998, finding it incompatible with the national public interest.

Overall, the omnibus package displays three major flaws evident among hundreds of measures that would inevitably degrade public lands. First, many of the individual bills that designate various wildernesses in this legislation advance weaker provisions than the 1964 Wilderness Act and renege on its agreements. Second, the omnibus bill contains many public land exchanges and giveaways that mostly benefit a few stakeholders but compromise the public interest. Other harmful provisions in the legislation would constrain the ability of public land agencies to properly manage lands. Finally, the omnibus bill includes a measure that promotes massive thinning/logging projects in the national forests under the guise of ecological restoration and biomass production for electricity generation from burning wood. The ten-year contracts for private companies created by this provision essentially turn public lands over to private interests, much like crown lands are treated in Canada.

The U.S. House of Representatives will likely vote on the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 this week. Please contact your local member of Congress and encourage them to halt passage of this destructive law that fails to address wilderness values, the interests of remote stakeholders, and the habitat needs of dwindling wildlife species. Our public wildlands are each too unique and irreplaceable to risk their permanent protection to a conglomeration of special-interest bills masquerading as the best wilderness legislation of the new century.