BY BEN GOAD
Press-Enterprise
WASHINGTON — Every United States Congress for nearly half a century, no matter how divided, has agreed to set aside undeveloped tracts of land for future generations by designating them as wilderness areas.
But as the nation’s 112th Congress draws to a close, lawmakers have yet to protect a single acre of forest, mountain or desert under the Wilderness Act. The clock is running out on 27 such bills, including Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s plan to preserve more than a million acres in San Bernardino County’s High Desert and Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s legislation to expand an existing wilderness area along the Riverside and San Diego county line.
As long as Washington remains consumed with efforts to avoid a national plunge off the “fiscal cliff,” it is likely that all of the bills will expire with the 112th Congress on Dec. 31. But advocates and congressional staffers attribute inaction on wilderness bills to a larger problem: bitter partisanship that has pervaded even areas in which Democrats and Republicans previously found common ground.
“It is interesting that we have these bipartisan supporters, and the committees are still not moving them (the bills) forward,” said Annette Kondo, a spokeswoman for The Wilderness Society.
In 1964, Congress passed the Wilderness Act, which set aside more than nine million acres throughout the country and authorized Congress to designate wilderness areas where appropriate. Apart from the following Congress — the 89th — every Congress since has taken advantage of that power.
Almost 110 million acres across 44 states has been set aside as wilderness, including more than 15 million acres in California, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Feinstein, D-Calif., first introduced her California Desert Protection Act in late 2009, and she reintroduced the bill at the start of the current Congress in January 2010.
The legislation would bar development on more than a million acres in the Mojave Desert and northwest of Palm Springs. The largest component is the 941,000-acre Mojave Trails National Monument, encompassing dry lakes, mountain ranges and other terrain on both sides of Interstate 40, south of the Mojave National Preserve. It also would establish the Sand to Snow National Monument stretching across 134,000 acres from San Gorgonio Peak to the desert floor near Palm Springs.
The bill has support from a broad spectrum of local groups and officials and was the subject of a hearing before the Senate Energy Committee.
But it stalled in the face of possible opposition from Republicans, who question whether so much land should be deemed off-limits to development or other uses.
“There are Republicans who don’t want to do conservation bills,” energy committee spokesman Bill Wicker said.
“It’s really pretty simple. They just refuse to vote for them.”
Wilderness bills in the Senate are traditionally passed by unanimous consent, rather than a recorded vote, meaning that a single opponent can block passage.
Feinstein said she remains committed to passing the bill.
“I plan to reintroduce the bill early next year and look forward to working with the new Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman,” Feinstein said.
Both Feinstein’s bill and the Issa legislation won backing from the Obama administration, which issued a report in November 2011 urging Congress to approve those and 16 other wilderness bills in a single package.
The Issa measure would protect 21,000 acres, roughly doubling the existing Beauty Mountain and Agua Tibia wilderness areas in southwestern Riverside County and extending them into San Diego County.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who championed the original Beauty Mountain bill, introduced companion legislation to Issa’s bill in the Senate.
Though there is some opposition to wilderness legislation in the Senate, the lower chamber is the real problem, said Paul Spitler, policy director for The Wilderness Society.
“There is an extreme minority in the House of Representatives that is philosophically opposed to wilderness,” he said, noting that none of this year’s wilderness bills were approved by the House Natural Resources committee, which has jurisdiction over them.
A year ago, the panel’s chairman, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., raised concerns about the White House’s wilderness plan, arguing that “the federal government already owns more lands than it can afford to properly manage.”
Committee spokeswoman Crystal Feldman defended the panel’s record on public lands issues.
“While neither the Senate or the House have passed wilderness legislation this Congress, the House Natural Resources Committee has held hearings on several wilderness bills, thoughtfully and carefully examining whether they have broad local support and how they would impact jobs, local economies and recreational opportunities,” she said.
While Issa, R-Vista, and other Republicans have proposed individual wilderness bills, some in the GOP are reluctant to support the measures, which they feel limit land use rights.
Following a statewide redistricting effort, Issa will no longer represent any part of Riverside County or the area where the new wilderness area is proposed.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, who will represent that area in the next Congress, has not yet taken a position on the legislation, according to his spokesman, Joe Kasper.
With no movement in sight, Issa and proponents of the other 26 wilderness bills now languishing in Congress have no choice but to look to the next Congress, or beyond.
Said Issa spokesman Frederick Hill: “We believe the proposal has merit and will ultimately become law.”