Trashing Our Treasures: Congressional Assault on the Best of America

Environment Montana

National parks, forests and public lands are essential for maintaining healthy ecosystems, safeguarding our waterways, cleaning up the air we breathe, protecting wildlife habitat, and providing opportunities for Americans to connect with the outdoors. Recreation and tourism on public lands also contributes to a $646 billion outdoor industry economy that supports 6.1 million jobs. This report showcases that Glacier National Park and surrounding wilderness areas in Montana is at risk of resource exploitation and development if attacks on our public lands are signed into law.

Despite the critical role that Glacier National Park plays in protecting water quality and ecosystems, as well as providing outdoor recreation opportunities, it remains under attack.  Development, mining, drilling, and logging could destroy essential habitat for plants and wildlife and ruin the experience for nature-goers. The environmental laws that protect public lands are crucial to safeguarding them from this type of exploitation and preserving treasured places for future generations. Many Congressional leaders have been working to dismantle these very protections and open treasured landmarks to resource exploitation and development. This report highlights some of the most egregious attacks, which put some of the most sensitive and beloved places in the country, such as Glacier National Park, at risk of being lost forever.

The bills that threaten Glacier National Park include:

• Wilderness & Roadless Release Act (H.R. 1581), by Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

This bill would open roadless areas in national forests and wilderness study areas on public lands to road building, development and resource extraction. This would leave some of the most sensitive lands in the country vulnerable to habitat destruction and pollution.

• Wilderness Development Act (H.R. 2834), by Rep. Dan Benishek (R-MI).

[Official name: Recreational Fishing and Hunting Heritage and Opportunities Act]

This bill would amend the Wilderness Act and could allow motorized vehicles, temporary road building, construction, logging and energy development in pristine wilderness areas. Without the legal protections that come with a Wilderness designation, pristine areas and the wildlife that depend on them could be lost forever to exploitation.

• So-called Conservation & Economic Growth Act (H.R. 2578), by Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA).

This package of lands bills would allow a corporation to clearcut old growth in Alaska, allow motorized vehicles near turtle nesting areas on Cape Hatteras National Seashore (in North Carolina) and in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (in Minnesota), and waive 16 cornerstone environmental and public health laws within 100 miles of the Canadian and Mexican borders. The package would also gut conservation protections associated with grazing on federal lands to exclude the management of livestock grazing from environmental review.

Previous members of Congress worked with local communities decades ago to preserve this treasured place for generations to come undoing the laws that keep it safe would be devastating to the integrity of our lands and our national character.