The Safari Club and the National Rifle Association have funded and backed H.R. The only reason we have pockets of true wilderness left in a place like Yellowstone is because we once made a collective decision not to go there with our hoards of hikers, inner tubes, paddleboats, and other recreational toys-in a word, restraint. Lummis and Bishop are counted among the legislators most hostile to wilderness and environmental protection on Capitol Hill, and why the paddling industry has chosen such unsavory bedfellows as their champions puzzles many. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) introduced the River Paddling Act, which would open sensitive areas of wilderness in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks to recreational paddling. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and his colleague Rep. Both bills aim at driving a political wedge between environmental communities and their past allies in the outdoor recreational industries. The sponsors of both these bills are well-known conservative enemies of wilderness and the wild animals who range freely in these habitats.
4089) passed in April, would gut the entire 1964 Wilderness Act, opening wilderness areas to development and managing the wildlife of these wild places as game farms. 3942) would open wilderness areas in Yellowstone National Park to high-tech boating, while the second bill (H.R. House of Representatives aim at decimating wilderness protection: The first (H. Settling over wilderness areas everywhere, like a deadly fog, is the scourge of our time: global warming. Everyday, here in Montana, you can watch the protracted lines of coal cars headed night and day to Pacific ports where the dirtiest of fuel is shipped to feed an endless Asian appetite for energy. The first of these threats is the usual business of extracting resources, pushed urgently to the forefront by discoveries in the energy field: coal-bed methane, fracking technology, and the tar sands of Alberta. On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, wilderness in America, as physical sanctuary and as an idea, finds itself under an unprecedented swarm of threats. “I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left worth saving.” -Edward Abbey
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