Date: 2000-06-07
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I rise in opposition to the amendment. I rise in opposition because I think thatthe amendment. while well intentioned. fails to recognize the battle that rages in the West over wilderness study areas. What the gentleman from Colorado is trying to do with his amendment is to protect many of those lands that. in fact. have been identified as having wilderness qualities eligible for wilderness study areas. but have not yet been designated. That is one of the problems that the gentleman from Washington will address. because if we look at the southern edge of the boundary here. we have significant areas that have been identified in the 202 process. and that is halted and it is halted as of this day. which means. in fact. they can be managed in an area that is inconsistent with the notion that they would later be designated as a wilderness study area. That is also true on the western edge of this swell also where that is going on outside of the .boundaries. Now. why do we have to designate these wilderness study areas. which is different than designating them as wilderness? That is a separate determination. We do that because we have to protect the environmental assets that are on the ground. in place. We know that out West there is a hard attitude in some communities against wilderness. and we know that there is constant lobbying going on in terms of claims on land. in terms of efforts to push roads into lands. into ORV policies that do not adequately protect them. and then later. those are used as evidence saying that these lands should not be wilderness because they have been degraded. So this amendment does not really protect those lands. even those lands that have already been designated by BLM in its process that it went through of reevaluating these lands after a rather flawed process in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s. This is not a stagnant situation. This does not just stay frozen in time because of this bill or this amendment. With all due respect. wilderness is about politics. Wilderness is about politics. It is about judgeships. it is about appointments. it is about what the administration wants and does not want. This is not childs play. this is the big leagues out West. So U.S. senators saying what they want and what they do not want in wilderness has nothing to do with the environment. and what members of delegations tell the administration. this administration and the next administration and the last administrations. It is sort of nonpartisan. if you will. in some cases. or bipartisan. because this is the struggle about the politics of local communities and of the States. If we do not adopt the Udall amendment. all of that continues and these areas are quite eligible for further degradation of those environmental values. The gentleman from New York is trying to upgrade that but. in fact. the amendment does not do that. That is why we need to designate these lands as wilderness study areas. Finally. let me say. as the gentleman from Utah suggested. that this is an arbitraryamendment. that we are just slamming down wilderness study areas. The fact of the matter is much of it is as a result. or all of it is as a result of the 202 process that has been gone through and has identified these areas. This is far from arbitrary. In fact. very little about wilderness is arbitrary in the West because it has been argued for so many years and has been identified and the values have been argued back and forth. So the fact of the matter is. to provide the real protections that these areas are entitled to means that we have to reject the Boehlert amendment and pass the Udall amendment.