New plans for wild areas

A move by the US government to preserve more public lands as wilderness has been welcomed by environmentalists but has angered ranchers, sportsmen and energy companies that fear access to land will be reduced. The new policy, initiated at the end of last year, directs the Bureau of Land Management to survey its vast holdings from Alaska to Arizona in search of unspoilt wildlife areas. The agency can then designate these as ‘wild lands’. Protection will vary from site to site, but in general such lands will be protected from activities that disrupt habitat or destroy the solitude of the wild, according to the Interior Department. This might mean banning Plans to extend protected lands in the US are causing controversy. Nigel Williams reports. New plans for wild areas oil drilling, uranium mining or cattle grazing in some areas. It could also mean restrictions on some recreational activities. The agency is little known by Americans who mostly think of national parks as the major wildlife refuges. But it actually has a mandate over 400,000 square miles of US land — an area nearly four times the size of Colorado. Forty years ago, a commission studied these lands and designated the most significant as national parks, national monuments or wilderness areas. But the commission also noted that much of the terrain had never been formally examined for conservation opportunities. They recommended a comprehensive inventory of these public lands, to identify all such areas that should be assigned a priority for protection, until lasting conservation decisions could be made by Congress. Only now, this work is beginning. So last month, the Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, together with the BLM director Bob Abbey, announced a directive that reaffirmed the ability of the BLM to determine if there are public lands with wilderness characteristics, including ecological, scenic, recreational, educational and scientific values. The bureau is to make this planning assessment available to the public, who will have the chance to be involved in the process. Salazar has designated the process as ‘high priority’ and asked the BLM to report back to him by the end of June. “Managing an area to protect its wilderness characteristics provides unique opportunities and benefits for present and future generations that may otherwise be irreparably lost,” he said. “Now the public can take into proper consideration all the resource values at stake, including the option of preserving some wonderful new wilderness areas.” But the proposals have raised fears amongst some of the public, and BLM officials have said that plans to protect particular regions will be revisited every 10–20 years to see how they are impacting on local communities and users.