House Votes to Approve CO Rep’s Wilderness Protection Bill

In a sign of continued support for American wildlife, the U.S. House of Representatives has voted to approve Colorado Representative Diana DeGette’s wilderness-protection bill. This is the fifth time in two years this bill has been approved by the House and sent to the Senate for approval.

The bill, known as the PAW+ Act, would give permanent protection over 1.6 million acres of public land, including 660,000 acres here in Colorado in addition to public land in New Mexico, Washington, and California. “Preserving these pristine, untouched, wilderness lands is about more than just protecting our environment,” DeGette says.  “It’s about protecting our economy, our way of life—and ensuring our nation’s top military pilots have the space they need to train.”

If approved, this bill would be the largest federal land protection package introduced as part of the United States’ annual defense bill. One of the 36 of the protected areas in Colorado is the High Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site (HAATS), a military flight school in Gypsum, Colorado.

While selling the bill to Congress usually requires legislation supporting the military, many of the protected areas are still popular sites for outdoor recreation, and this bill will protect public land across the American West from future development such as mining, logging, and drilling activities.

Many of the bills that now protect land in Colorado have focused on the high-elevation mountain areas that all Coloradans know and love, but this bill adds protection to many mid-elevation lands which are critical ecosystems. This includes sites such as Handies Peak, the Dolores River Canyon, Little Bookcliffs, sites that are important for recreational activities such as mountain biking and rock climbing, land used by ranchers, and land management agencies.

DeGette has spent years modifying and trying to get some form of this bill through the Senate for some years now. Beginning its life as the Citizen’s Wilderness Act, DeGette has been working and speaking with citizens and land managers over the years to identify lands in need of protection.

While getting the Senate to vote on the bill in the past has been a major setback, the additional protections and military support in this version of the bill should garner support for more of its staunch opponents.