America’s future generations may owe Colorado’s Congressional
leaders a debt of thanks. Senators Salazar and Allard with Representatives
Udall and Musgrave introduced a bill today that will give Rocky Mountain
National Park the gold standard in public lands protections with more than
200,000 acres designated as wilderness.
“This is truly a gift to all
Americans, not just those in Colorado,” says US Public Interest Research Group
Forests Advocate Christy Goldfuss. “Our country without Rocky Mountain National
Park is like Grandma’s house without apple pie. Thanks to the good work of
Colorado’s Congressional leaders, this part of our natural heritage is closer to
guaranteed protection for generations to come.”
Background:
This bipartisan bill caps 30 years of efforts to designate much of
Rocky Mountain National Park as wilderness. In 1974, President Nixon presented
the first proposal to do so, recommending 239,835 park acres for wilderness
designation. Although the official designation was not made at that time, the
importance of the park’s wilderness characteristics had already been recognized
by park managers. Since the 60’s, the Park has been managed under wilderness
guidelines.
More recently, attempts by Colorado’s Congressional leaders
to pass wilderness legislation for the park have been mired in politics. For
the past eight years, Representative Udall has introduced legislation to
designate 94 percent of the park as wilderness in the National Wilderness
Preservation System. Senator Salazar has joined him in supporting that
legislation. Last Congress, Senator Allard and Representative Musgrave
introduced their own bill providing protections for the park. The two sides
disagreed regarding access to the Grand River Ditch. The new bill requires the
National Park Service and the ditch’s owner to come to an agreement about how
liability will be handled in the future.
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U.S. PIRG is
the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups. State PIRGs are
non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy
organizations.
