When U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D, introduced a new
wilderness bill for western Colorado last month, there were loud
cheers from the state’s wilderness movement. The bill seeks to
protect more than a dozen tracts of mostly redrock canyon country
managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Now begins the uphill
battle to get it through Congress.
“The last
wilderness bill in Colorado took 10 years (to pass),” says Suzanne
Johnson of the Wilderness Society in Denver. “We’re hoping to beat
that.”
Critics lined up from the start to blast
the 1.4 million-acre wilderness proposal. Western Colorado’s
Republican Rep. Scott McInnis opposes the bill, along with
Republican Sens. Wayne Allard and Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Club 20,
a coalition of industry and local government in western Colorado,
says it will counter with its own 400,000-acre
bill.
That’s no surprise to environmentalists,
who say they’re prepared for the battle.
“The
fact is, we’re losing these areas,” says Matt Sura of the Western
Colorado Congress. “The sooner we begin talking about it, the more
areas we can save.”
Brian O’Donnell of the
Wilderness Support Center in Durango, an office that networks with
grassroots wilderness movements across the West, says more
wilderness proposals are in the works in other Western
states.
“I think that in at least the past few
years everyone was engaged in defensive battles,” O’Donnell says.
“We basically had our worst enemies running the committees that
have jurisdiction over wilderness.”
*Dustin
Solberg
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The long road to wilderness begins here.
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