This week, Congress passed its first wilderness bill in five years, offering a glimmer of hope that more land conservation is on the horizon. The bill’s now waiting on President Obama’s signature, which is widely expected.
With broad bipartisan support, a 32,500-acre chunk of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan is now permanently protected as wilderness, the highest level of federal land protection. The bill’s passage marks an end to the longest span without a wilderness designation since the Wilderness Act was authorized in 1964.
While the legislation did not protect a new acre of public land—rather, it increased the level of protection inside an already protected area—designation of wilderness within the National Lakeshore is an important step for this Congress to begin acting on the backlog of bipartisan conservation bills.
The U.S. House and Senate still need to make big strides to protect America’s pristine lands. The path forward is complicated as Republicans and Democrats prepare for a competitive midterm. But there’s a strong sentiment, especially in the West, that protecting public lands transcends politics and party.
As Westerners, we cherish our public lands; opinion research proves we want to see more protections to ensure hiking, biking, hunting and camping areas are open and accessible long into the future. Recent bipartisan polling by Colorado College shows Western voters support conservation by a wide margin, and we’re more likely to vote for candidates who push for conservation efforts. In fact, 7 in 10 Westerners are more likely to back a candidate who supports enhancing protections for some public lands.
President Obama’s new budget, released this week, also reflects a new push for conservation. In the FY2015 budget, the President called for fully funding the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) at $900 million, something that has happened only once in the program’s five decades. The LWCF is the nation’s premier conservation funding program, providing critical funds to protect and enhance access onto public lands.
Throwing his support behind robust LWCF funding shows President Obama is ready to fulfill a conservation agenda he set forth in his State of the Union address. The proposed budget also called for creating the Nationals Parks Centennial Initiative, with a focus on increasing youth and veteran engagement on public lands.
On the Congressional side, with dozens of land conservation bills waiting for passage, failure doesn’t stem from a lack of opportunities. Let’s hope the country’s growing desire to see conservation, and the successful effort to enhance protections at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore, catalyzes action.