Posted by Irvine Sign Company
Posted by Irvine Business Sign Company
The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed its first significant public lands conservation bill in years, designating more than 1 million acres of wilderness for environmental protection and permanently reauthorizing a federal program to pay for conservation measures.
There are several benefits for California, including an expansion of two of the most visited national parks in the California desert and designation of nearly 80 miles of scenic rivers while providing new off-highway vehicle recreation areas in San Bernardino County for motorized trail riding.
The House passage of the bill, on a vote of 363-62, sends the measure, which was passed by the Senate this month, to the desk of President Donald Trump. The vote Tuesday offered a rare moment of bipartisanship in a divided chamber and a rare victory for environmentalists at a time when the Trump administration is working aggressively to strip away protections on public lands and open them to mining and drilling.
Nonetheless, Trump was expected to sign the bill into law. But the 1 million acres of wilderness that would be protected by the bill stand in contrast to the administration’s plans to open up for drilling 9 million acres of protected habitat for the sage grouse, 2 million acres of protected land in Utah, parts of the vast Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and most United States coastal waters.
The package includes passage of the Desert Protection and Recreation Act, authored by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
“From desert tortoises to bighorn sheep and iconic Joshua trees, the beauty of the California desert is unrivaled,” she said in a tweet. “It’s a defining part of our state, and I’m proud to protect it.”
BREAKING: The House just passed a package of bills that includes my bill to protect the Mojave Desert. From desert tortoises to bighorn sheep and iconic Joshua trees, the beauty of the California desert is unrivaled. It’s a defining part of our state, and I’m proud to protect it.
— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) February 26, 2019
The lands package also secures new protections for our desert, creates California’s first National Heritage Area, develops smarter ways to manage the Santa Ana Wash and facilitates safety upgrades to the Contra Costa Canal. https://t.co/b2S4wDU1Gr
— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) February 26, 2019
Feinstein’s bill adds 4,518 acres to Joshua Tree National Park in Twentynine Palms, and 35,292 acres to Death Valley National Park, including about 1,600 acres donated by the Mojave Desert Land Trust.
One of the key measures was the addition of 200,000 acres for off-road users who ride motorized three- and four-wheelers up and down hills, rocks and gullies.
The legislation designates six Off-Highway Vehicle Recreation Areas including: Johnson Valley, north of Joshua Tree, Sprangler Hills, El Mirage, Rasor, Dumont Dunes and Stoddard Valley.
Other California provisions include:
• Eight new Bureau of Land Management wilderness areas totaling 280,360 acres;
• Expansion of the San Gorgonio Wilderness by 7,141 acres, located within the San Bernardino National Forest;
• Designating about 18,000 acres of BLM land in Inyo County as the Alabama Hills National Scenic Area;
• Adding 81,800 acres in Imperial County for wilderness protection.
Lawmakers and environmentalists celebrated passage of the bill as a victory for bipartisanship and conservation.
“This bill represents Congress at its best and truly gives the American people something to be excited about,” said Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. “It’s a massive win for the present and future of American conservation.”
Grijalva is one of several Western lawmakers from both parties who have worked for four years on the bill.
The bill is packed with parochial provisions designed to help the home states and districts of its authors. Among those is a provision for a land transfer in La Paz County, Arizona, to allow for the development of a solar farm, and a land exchange of 360 acres in Custer County, South Dakota, to allow the county to expand its airport.
Among the most consequential provisions is the permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a federal program established in the 1960s that uses fees and royalties paid by oil and gas companies drilling in federal waters to pay for onshore conservation programs.
Although the program has long enjoyed bipartisan support, Congress typically renews it for only a few years at a time, and it expired Sept. 30 and has not been renewed. The new public lands package would authorize the program permanently.
In part because the bill would reauthorize that program — under which fossil-fuel companies, rather than taxpayers, cover a major portion of the cost of protecting public lands — the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the measure would increase government revenues by $9 million over a decade.
“Today’s passage of a bipartisan public lands package, including permanent reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund and numerous conservation measures, represents a historic victory for our wildlife heritage and outdoor enthusiasts of every stripe,” said Collin O’Mara, president and chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation.
The bill would designate 1.3 million acres in Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and California as wilderness, the most stringent level of federal land protection. It prohibits any development and the use of most motorized vehicles. And the bill creates less-stringent but permanent protections for land in Montana and Washington state.
It would also classify approximately 225 miles of river in Massachusetts and Connecticut and 280 miles of river in Oregon as wild, scenic or recreational. It would add approximately 40,000 acres of federal land to the Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks and Mojave National Preserve.
It includes three new national monuments to be administered by the National Park Service: the home of civil rights activists Medgar and Myrlie Evers in Jackson, Mississippi; the Mill Springs Civil War battlefield in Nancy, Kentucky; and Camp Nelson, a Civil War recruitment and training center for African-American soldiers in Nicholasville, Kentucky.
The bill also includes some wildlife conservation provisions: It reauthorizes government conservation programs to protect exotic animals like rhinoceroses and tigers, and establishes cash-prize competitions for technological innovations in the prevention of illegal poaching and trafficking and protection of endangered wildlife.
Staff writers Sandra Emerson and Steve Scauzillo contributed to this article.
[Read More ...]
Posted by Irvine Sign Maker
For Free Sign Estimate Visit: Lighted Channel Letters Irvine ca
Posted by https://goo.gl/TXzGV5
No comments:
Post a Comment