Plan for Columbia Gorge wilderness looks dead

WASHINGTON — A massive lands bill that would have created new wilderness areas in five Western states is likely dead for the year, a victim of a filibuster threat, supporters said Friday.

The bipartisan bill would expand wilderness along Oregon's Mount Hood and create a vast new wilderness in Idaho's Owyhee canyons. The bill also would create wilderness areas in California, Colorado and New Mexico.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Nevada Democrat strongly supports the lands package, but his first priorities in a lame-duck session next week are a planned rescue for the auto industry and extension of unemployment insurance benefits.

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn has threatened to filibuster the lands bill over what he calls its excessive spending — nearly $4 billion over five years — and the removal of millions of acres of federal property from oil and gas development.

"The outlook for this legislation does not look real good," said Bill Wicker, a spokesman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "The two big problems right now are the clock and the economy."

Coburn's threat meant the Senate could have spent up to three days debating the lands package — time that Reid and other Senate leaders say should be devoted to the auto bailout and other legislation responding to the country's economic crisis.

The decision means that a plan to extend wilderness protection to about 125,000 acres surrounding Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge will be put off until next year.

The lands package also would create an 807-square-mile wilderness in southwest Idaho and open 300 square miles of previously off-limit areas in the Owyhee canyonlands to motorized recreation, livestock grazing and other activities.

The bill also would have preserved about 450,000 acres of wilderness in the Eastern Sierra and northern San Gabriel Mountains in California; 190,000 acres in Riverside County, Calif.; and 70,000 acres in California's Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks.

The Mount Hood bill was co-sponsored by Oregon's two senators, Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Gordon Smith. Wyden's chief of staff, Josh Kardon, said Friday that Wyden was among many senators in both parties frustrated by Coburn's refusal to allow the lands package to move though the Senate.

"These are bills that moved unanimously through committee with Republican and Democratic support," Kardon said, adding that Wyden was particularly disappointed "that Senator Smith won't be allowed the honor he deserves in enacting a Wyden-Smith Mount Hood wilderness legislation." Smith was defeated in his bid for re-election earlier this month.

Last month, Reid signaled that he would call back the Senate to vote on the lands package, which would set aside nearly 2 million acres of forests, deserts and mountaintops in eight states as federally protected wilderness. The bill, which combines 150 separate measures, also would designate hundreds of miles of scenic rivers and add six new trails to the nation's existing network.

Besides the five Western states, the bill included wilderness designations in Michigan, Virginia and West Virginia, and addressed public lands in dozens of states from coast to coast.

Lindsay Nothern, spokesman for Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said that despite the latest setback, Crapo was optimistic that his six-year effort to create an Owyhee wilderness ultimately will succeed.

"Whether the Owyhee Initiative comes up now, next week or after the first of the year we feel very good about the prospects that the bill will eventually pass because of the large amount of collaborative groundwork that's gone into the legislation," Nothern said Friday.

The lands bill is important to a lot of senators, including Reid and Crapo, "and it will definitely be an ongoing issue whether it gets dealt with next week or after the first of the year," Nothern said.

Wilderness advocates have been pushing for the lands package for months. And a bipartisan group of 20 senators — including Wyden, Crapo and both California senators — wrote Reid on Friday urging him to move the bill this year.

"It would be a huge, huge milestone and frankly, an amazing accomplishment for this Congress. It would be a shame when we are this close not to leave this legacy," said Mike Matz, executive director of The Wilderness Society.

Congress has not been so close to protecting so much land since 1984, when President Ronald Reagan signed into law nearly two dozen wilderness bills that added more than 10 million acres to the country's wilderness system.

In May, Congress protected more than 160,000 acres in the western Cascade Mountains of Washington as wilderness, the first time acreage has been preserved in that state in more than 20 years.

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Associated Press Writer Dina Cappiello contributed to this story.

AP-WS-11-14-08 1810EST