The Sportsmens Heritage Act would effectively repeal the Wilderness Act
The Wilderness Act defines wilderness as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man. In 2012, legislation is working its way through Congress that would undo almost 50-years of wilderness conservation by effectively repealing the Wilderness Act.
On April 17, 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 4089, the Sportsmens Heritage Act, supposedly to protect and enhance opportunities for recreational hunting, fishing, and shooting. But the bill is a thinly disguised measure to gut the 1964 Wilderness Act and protections for every unit of the National Wilderness Preservation System.
▪ The Sportsmens Heritage Act would permit almost any activity to occur within a wilderness boundary.
Any hunter, angler, or recreational shooter would be allowed to drive an ATV into Wilderness as long as he/she is engaged in one of those activities. Moreover, managers could build hunting blinds, cabins, target ranges, airplane landing strips, helicopter landing pads, or fishing ponds; dam rivers or streams; and build temporary roads or any structure or installation that could be rationalized as facilitating opportunities for hunting, fishing, or shooting.
Under this legislation, logging, mining, and oil and gas development could also be permitted within wilderness if the project could somehow be construed as good for wildlife. That may seem far-fetched, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rationalized the permitting of the proposed Rock Creek mine by claiming that mitigation measures actually make the mine good for grizzly bears. This type of twisted logic could be applied to any industrial project within a wilderness boundary.
▪ HR 4089 must be stopped in the Senate.
You can take action. Contact your Senator and tell him/her to vote no on the Sportsmens Heritage Act (HR4089) because keeping the Wilderness system in place is in the best interest of wildlife, sportsmen, and all those who enjoy wilderness. Remember that the primary purpose of the Sportsmens Heritage Act is to open our remaining wilderness to motorized recreation, oil and gas drilling, mining, and logging. A simple e-mail to your Senator would help stop this horrible legislation.
To access your Senators E-mail address, go to: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm