Last week, while I was at the National Bicycle Summit, the omnibus Wilderness bill failed to pass the U.S. House of Representatives. House leaders had brought it to vote under suspension of the rules, which meant it needed a 2/3 vote instead of simple majority, and it fell two short.
Some anti-Wilderness people are excited about this, but I doubt the situation will persist. Some horse-trading will occur behind the scenes and the vote will eventually pass. Bear in mind that this is the beginning of the session; they have almost two years to get this done. The Senate has already passed the bill.
The bill combines Wilderness and other protection measures from a number of states. It will protect a lot of land, which is good.
From the narrower view of bicycle access it contains at least a couple wins and a number of serious losses. On the plus side: The section for Jefferson National Forest in Virginia includes a national scenic area that allows bicycling — progress for diverse designations. In Colorado, the section designating much of Rocky Mountain National Park as a Wilderness includes a corridor for a bike trail.
In Oregon, the omnibus includes the Lewis and Clark Mount Hood Wilderness Act. At one time, this included a new, alternative protection designation tailored for bicycling, introduced by Senator Ron Wyden. I don’t know if that survived. Maybe someone can inform us via comments.
On the down side, we got rolled again in California, where the environmental movement is at its strongest. Lands east of the Sierras will go Wilderness and close existing bike routes, especially in the White Mountains. In Colorado, the BLM Dominguez Canyon goes Wilderness, closing a route I rode many years ago, but it had been closed for many years. In Idaho we’re probably losing a lot of opportunities in the 517,000 acres of Idaho’s Owyhee-Bruneau wilderness. Cyclists also got rolled in West Virginia, where the Wild Monongahela Act protects 37,000 acres as four new Wilderness areas in the Monongahela National Forest.
With all these losses, the core reason is that bicyclists were not organized and lacked the political power to get modifications.
For a quick summary of the bill, see: http://www.leaveitwild.org/news/releases/1437
–GS