The bill is set for a vote in the coming days by the Senate.
“If there ever was a moment for the Obama administration to come to the defense of America’s public lands, this is it,” said Randi Spivak, the Center’s public lands director. “These provisions have nothing to do with our military and everything to do with ramming through the right-wing agenda to tear protections away from the lands that Americans own and love. Secretaries Jewell and Vilsack should ask President Obama to veto the bill. ”
Included in the bill are provisions that would:
- trade 2,400 acres of national forest land in Arizona to Resolution Copper, a foreign mining company, to facilitate development of a copper mine that’s long been opposed by locals. The lands are considered sacred by local tribes who have fought the land trade for years.
- automatically renew livestock grazing permits on tens of millions of acres of public lands, even where grazing operations are degrading wildlife habitat and fouling streams and rivers. This section, if enacted, would exacerbate habitat degradation that will imperil the greater sage grouse, increasing the need to protect this western bird under the Endangered Species Act.
- transfer 70,000 acres of public forest in the Tongass National Forest to Sealaska Corporation, thereby privatizing dozens of the best undeveloped coves, bays and recreational areas on the Tongass National Forest, damaging vital fish and wildlife habitats and jeopardizing the livelihoods of several small communities and other forest users.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a
national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 800,000
members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered
species and wild places.
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