Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) issued a press release the week of September 8, 2003, charging the Bush Administration with blocking National Park wilderness plans. The release contended that, "The Bush Administration has quietly smothered efforts to place almost a quarter million acres of national park lands in protected wilderness status, according to documents obtained by PEER. During the past several months, top Department of Interior officials have pocketed wilderness designations proposed by park officials for Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve (128,000 acres), California's Channel Islands National Park (68,000 acres), Texas's Guadalupe National Park (38,000 acres) and Michigan's Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (7,700 acres)."
PEER reports that Bush political appointees are blocking park wilderness assessments started during the second Clinton term from reaching Congress including assessments of Big Cypress, Channel Islands, Guadalupe Mountains and Pictured Rocks.
The release concludes, "Apart from these latest wilderness assessments, and in apparent violation of the Wilderness Act and park enabling acts, the Bush Administration has failed to transmit recommendations from previous administrations that Congress designate more than 2 million acres of roadless areas as wilderness in eight parks in the Lower 48, including Grand Canyon, Voyageurs, Sleeping Bear Dunes and Glen Canyon National Parks. Nearly 17 million more acres in Alaska's national parks are similarly in limbo."
Background
Section 3(2)(c) of the Wilderness Act required the Secretary of the Interior to review, during a ten year period, roadless areas of 5,000 or more contiguous acres in the then-existing National Parks and National Monuments. The department made those determinations and sent them to the president, who forwarded them to Congress. Congress has acted on some, but many still await legislation.
For park units established since 1964, the National Park Service has the affirmative obligation under the Organic Act, Wilderness Act, and National Environmental Protection Act to examine potential wilderness in units of the National Park system in their land management planning processes. Furthermore, in legislation establishing new park system units, Congress frequently mandates that additional wilderness studies take place.
Unfortunately, the National Park Service has failed to evaluate many park units for wilderness quality lands.
The Wilderness Society filed a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service (NPS) in the Washington, DC Federal Court on January 15, 2003. This suit charges that the NPS negligently violated the Wilderness Act, the Administrative Procedures Act, the NPS Organic Act, and its own administrative policies by (1) failing to evaluate 39 separate NPS units for "wilderness quality lands"; (2) by failing to protect such lands; and (3) by failing to forward a recommendation for wilderness status for any such lands.
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