A battle brewing over NREPA

Two distinct sides are preparing to battle over a recurring piece of legislation that would dramatically alter land management in Wyoming and the West. On one end of the ideological spectrum are environmental groups who have introduced the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) to Congress. The act, contained in H.R. 980 and co-sponsored by 71 house members primarily from California and states east of the Mississippi River, sets aside 24 million acres of public land in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington as wilderness, meaning the land would be off limits to motorized vehicles, road building, mining and timber sales. In response to the act, local leaders and Wyoming’s entire congressional delegation are preparing a counter attack. They contend NREPA is nothing more than a land grab by meddling outsiders that would debilitate local economies with strict land use rules by squashing traditional recreation and industry from large tracts of public land...Initially nameless, movement ecology developed from the concept that animal species are being deprived genetic interchange by geographic isolation resulting from human encroachment. In other words, human roads, cities, railroads and subdivisions are fragmenting native animal species populations into isolated “islands” that limit their natural movement thereby shrinking the genetic pool. And that shrunken genetic pool slowly erodes the genetic viability of entire animal species. To combat it, ecologists proposed creating ecological corridors to facilitate the large-scale movement of individual animals across otherwise impassable terrain (e.g. terrain bisected by an interstate or developed into a sprawling suburban zone.) For the past 16 years, movement ecology grew in popularity, as did the concept of global warming. Now the two ideas have merged into a movement that says corridors must be established to accommodate animal movements as those creatures respond to the effects of global warming...Sublette Examiner