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Yet another land grab by congress and big government
[Daily Caller] A lengthy public lands package sitting in Congress adds hundreds of thousands of acres of federally protected wilderness without securing funding to manage it.The House is preparing to vote on a bipartisan land package next week that is roughly 660 pages and composed of 118 different bills. The Senate version passed its version, the most comprehensive land package in a decade, on Feb. 12 in a 92 to 8 vote. "It touches every state, features the input of a wide coalition of our colleagues, and has earned the support of a broad, diverse coalition of many advocates for public lands, economic development and conservation," Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, according to The Washington Post. The Senate package designates 1.3 million acres in California, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah as wilderness, the strictest form of federal protection that bans development of almost any kind as well as roads and most forms of motorized travel. It prohibits mineral development on 370,000 acres of land near two national parks in Montana and Washington state. The lands package designates three new national monuments ‐ two in Kentucky and one in Mississippi ‐ to be managed by the National Park Service (NPS) and classifies roughly 500 miles of river in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Oregon as wild, scenic or recreational. Posted by: Besoeker 2019-02-23 |
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