The Northern Rocky Mountains ecosystem in the United States is known by ecologists, biologists, and naturalists as one of the last areas of the contiguous United States that is relatively undeveloped enough and large enough to support a functioning ecosystem. The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act is designed to protect this ecosystem and the many threatened and endangered species such as grizzly bears, bull trout, sockeye salmon, and Canadian lynx, while creating jobs that restore old roads and clear cuts. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies based in Helena, Montana has been campaigning for the legislation for two decades with the help of numerous Congresspersons, celebrities, and grassroots groups such as the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society. The legislation has been introduced and discussed in Congress five times since 1993, most recently in November 2011 with 34 co-sponsors by December 2012.
Details of the legislation
The legislation would affect roadless areas in five states, including in Idaho, 7 million in Montana, 5 million in Wyoming, 750,000 in eastern Oregon and 500,000 in eastern Washington. The total includes in Yellowstone, Glacier and Grand Teton national parks. The NREPA does not affect private land. The legislation will:
Designate more than of America's premier roadless lands as wilderness,
Connect natural, biological corridors, ensuring the continued existence of native plants and animals,
Keep water available for ranchers and farmers downstream until later in the season when it is most needed,
Allow for historic uses such as hunting, fishing and firewood gathering,
Save taxpayers $245 million over a 10-year period through the elimination of federally subsidized lumber harvests, mining and oil/gas production, and grazing allotments on federally owned land.
Congressional Action
Legislation on Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act
February 7, 1995 - H.R.852, Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act of 1995
July 14, 1993 - H.R.2638, Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act of 1993
Carolyn B. Maloney, representative from the 14th district of New York most recently introduced the bill on November 3, 2011, and it had 34 cosponsors as of December 4, 2012. Representative Maloney also introduced the legislation in February 2009, as of December 1, 2009 there were 103 co-sponsoring Congresspersons in the House of Representatives. The singer Carole King, a resident of Custer County, Idaho, has testified before Congress in 1994, 2007 and 2009 in support of the act.
Opposition to the Legislation
Opponents to the NREPA state that there will be a loss of extraction jobs in the northern Rockies; mining, logging, and oil/gas production as a whole account for many of the jobs in the five affected states. Economics professor Tom Power, Ph.D. from the University of Montana has found that industries based on extracting resources from the land are more prone to "boom and bust" economic cycles, creating ghost towns, and unstable living conditions, while economies that are based around wilderness areas are more sustainable and have higher than average job growth rates.
Similar Ecosystem Protection Projects
There are other wildland protection projects currently being endeavoured by citizens around the world. In North America there are four wildlife corridors that have been proposed by the Wildlands Network, each providing a highway, called a "wildway", for migrating creatures to mitigate the effects of climate change: the Pacific Wildway running from Baja to Alaska, Boreal Wildway running west–east from Alaska, through Canada, to the northeastern shores of North America, the Eastern Wildway running from Everglades in Florida to the Arctic, and the Western Wildway also called the "spine of the continent" runs from southern Mexico along the Rocky Mountains up into the Arctic. The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative is a bi-national NGO that promotes the conservation of habitats and wildlife movement ability from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to the Arctic Circle.
