UPDATE:
November 21,2008

Senate Majority Leader, Senator Harry Reid had planned to bring this bill before the Senate for a vote during the “lame duck session” following the national elections, but with the threat of a filibuster and economic issues deemed more urgent, he decided to pull the bill for the time being.  There is still a slim chance that the Omnibus Land Bill could  be acted on, but since this is a bi-partisan bill, it may be allowed to die and a more liberal version conceivably written next year.  In the mean time we may still have a small window of opportunity to let our congressional men and women know that we are opposed to this legislation.

January 16, 2009

THE SENATE HAS VOTED! -  THEY PASSED THE OMNIBUS LAND BILL!!!!

HERE IS HOW YOUR SENATOR VOTED:

Alphabetical by Senator Name

It is still in the House of Representatives and I strongly suspect that they will act on it right away.

MAKE SURE YOUR CONGRESSMAN VOTES "NO"

December 2008

WORDS OF CAUTION

By

John M. Wright, RPG

AFMS  Conservation & Legislation Chairman

 By the time you read this article the national elections should be over and regardless of the outcome we are going to be facing the possibilities of significant changes in our access to public lands.  The senate has before it a bi-partisan package known as the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2008.  This Act is a sweeping package that contains numerous “bills”

that will add millions of acres of new wilderness and other public lands to the areas now under government protection.   

 Senate  Majority Leader, Senator Harry Reid may call the Senate back for a “lame duck session” to vote on this bill after the national elections.  Since this is a bi-partisan bill, it may be allowed to die if the Democrats win a substantial number of seats and a more liberal version  could conceivably be written next year.

 Besides the thousands of acres that will be added to the Wilderness Areas and National Parks, a new entity will be established known as the National Landscape Conservation System. This will essentially place an additional  26 million acres of public lands to be controlled by BLM under a “National Park” type system which will eliminate or severely limit any type of recreational mining.  The public lands that are designated as Wilderness Areas are already “off limits” for all practical purposes for most  types of recreational activity. The Paleontological Resources Preservation Act, HR554, which was resurrected again earlier this year and approved by committee, could conceivably be added to the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2008.

 The Wilderness Act of 1964 originally consisted of  9.1 million acres of national forest wilderness areas.  As of 2004, the Wilderness System comprises over 107 million acres involving federal lands administered by four agencies: the National Park Service (43,616,250 acres), U.S. Forest Service (34,867,591 acres), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (20,699,108 acres), and Bureau of Land Management (6,512,227 acres)   for a total of : 107,436,608 acres.  Using these figures as a reference, I think we can safely assume the areas set aside for The National Landscape Conservation System will grow accordingly and the Palentological Resources  Preservation Act, if passed into law, will be substantially expanded over the coming years.

 The environmentalists are also working diligently at having states and large private land owners convert their properties into wilderness areas similar to the ones owned by the U.S. government.  The environmentalists are well organized and financed, which in many cases allows them to exert considerable pressure on land owners.  This is going to further limit many areas that can be used for recreational purposes.