Editorial from Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Editorial

Most of the controversial “policy riders” on the spending bill for the
remainder of the federal fiscal year disappeared in the final
negotiations between Congress and the Obama administration late last
week. However, one remaining rider is of special interest to Alaska.

The rider blocks a new federal “Wild Lands” program — for a few months at
least.

That’s appropriate. The secretly written policy was a disaster for the
Obama administration, which did right by ceding ground to congressional
opponents. Federal officials should accept the signs and repeal the
public land order that established the policy.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar established the “Wild Lands” policy for
the Bureau of Land Management in late December. Salazar’s land order
tells the BLM to identify its lands with wilderness characteristics.
These lands “shall be managed to protect their wilderness
characteristics” — unless BLM decides it’s appropriate to do otherwise,
the order states. But even if compromising the lands’ wilderness values
is appropriate, the agency must consider ways to minimize the effects.

The BLM manages more than 75 million acres in Alaska, a state with a
total land area of about 375 million acres. BLM’s job, in general, is to
manage for multiple uses, unless a specific area within its portfolio has
been designated for greater protection.

Several BLM areas and river corridors in Alaska have been set aside for
extra conservation, but the agency manages no official wilderness in
Alaska and much of the agency’s land remains without special designation.
Environmental advocates who have the ear of the current administration
want that changed.

The new policy does not establish official wilderness. But it creates a
baseline assumption that undisturbed BLM lands will be designated as wild
land and managed as wilderness. It requires a positive determination by
the agency to overturn this assumption.

That assumption creates yet another barrier to transportation and
economic enterprise on the public lands in Alaska. The barriers are
already substantial. In 1980, Congress blanketed almost half the state
with national parks, refuges, forests, preserves, monuments, wild and
scenic rivers and conservation and recreation areas.

The federal government should not be allowed to administratively bulk up
this blanket with potentially tens of millions of additional acres.
Alaska’s lands have all the federal care and comfort they need.

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