David Williams | March 1, 2011 | Reposted from Colorado Independent
House Republicans today began a week of what will no doubt be heated hearings aimed at blocking Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s Wild Lands order that directed the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to protect millions of acres of federal land for its wilderness value.
Issued in December of last year, Secretarial Order 3310 compels the BLM, which manages more public land than any other federal agency, to take public input from locally affected communities and then use its existing land planning process to designate appropriate areas as “Wild Lands” and manage them accordingly.
Western lawmakers, mostly Republicans, are up in arms about what they perceive as the federal government locking up public lands, blocking energy extraction and mining interests and killing jobs in areas already hard-hit by the global recession.
“Millions of acres of multi-use land in the West are at risk of being locked up if the administration carries out this [wild lands] policy,” said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. Hastings chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, which held a hearing today on Salazar’s order. Next up is a hearing on the Department of Interior’s budget on Thursday, followed by a BLM budget hearing on Monday.
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