From the Western Roundtable - October 31, 2008

Dear Colleague:

Congressional leaders say they will ram through an omnibus public lands package after the elections in a "lame duck" Congress.  The Roundtable is rallying Westerners to oppose this huge federal land grab.  Take action here right now!

This bill, H.R. 5151, includes more than 150 bills that would: create/expand a number of wilderness areas; establish new conservation areas; create/ add to wild and scenic designations; designate new national scenic trails; add new national and historic park units and nearly a dozen new national heritage areas.

In total, this package would create more than a million acres of wilderness, restrict the development of energy resources on various federal lands, and place hundreds of thousands of acres under new or enhanced federal control and further restrict many forms of use and access to public lands.

Not only that, but this bill would lock in, by statute, the Clinton Administration-inspired "National Landscape Conservation System" (NLCS) within the BLM. The bill would give federal land managers the ability to alter the long-standing multiple use management philosophy of the BLM by elevating the purposes to “conserve, protect, restore” above other purposes for NLCS units. This could mean agriculture, energy exploration and production and other economic uses could become imperiled on huge swathes of Western public lands.

Please take 60 seconds and send a pre-drafted communication to your elected official here.

Thank you for helping to stop this very bad legislation.