House Passes Land Protections Once Again

Photo credit: George Eiermann, the Olympic Peninsula, which would receive increased protections through the Wild Olympics Wilderness and Wild and Scenic River Act.

Last week, the House passed a number of landscape protection bills in their version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY2024. The NDAA is a must-pass defense spending bill that needs to be reauthorized annually to fund the military and other defense priorities.

The House has been incredibly committed to passing new public lands protections, and we are grateful for their work. You can see our letter to House leadership here. Versions of this package have now passed four times through the House, most recently as amendments through the NDAA, and House members continue to show their commitment to protecting public lands and waters.

The landscape bills in the NDAA include:

  • Central Coast Heritage Protection Act

  • Colorado Wilderness Act

  • Northwest California Wilderness, Recreation, and Working Forests Act

  • Rim of the Valley Corridor Preservation Act

  • San Gabriel Mountains Foothills and Rivers Protection Act

  • Wild Olympics Wilderness and Wild and Scenic River Act

  • Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy (CORE) Act

  • Grand Canyon Protection Act

  • Cerro de la Olla Wilderness Establishment Act

  • Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument Expansion Act

You can read more about each of these bills and view maps of the proposed protections here.

If you’re wondering what public land protections have to do with defense authorization, you aren’t alone. The short story is that Congress sometimes uses must-pass packages in order to pass other pieces of important, bipartisan legislation that it has become increasingly unable to move through the normal legislative process. Sometimes these additions are part of larger “horse trading” efforts that keep both parties happy and moving forward on must-pass items, like funding bills; other times these additions can be a way to move noncontroversial items without using a bunch of floor time, which is a scarcer commodity than you might think.

In the last decade or so, we’ve seen many land protection bills pass as components of must-pass bills like the NDAA, so this is not a new strategy, and it is something the lawmakers leading the NDAA are generally sanguine with as long as it doesn’t jeopardize the passage of their bill.

While it will be much more of a challenge to pass these same amendments in the Senate’s version of the NDAA, the outdoor community has a role to play in continuing to encourage the Senate to prioritize public lands protections and to thank the House for continuing to champion these designations. Every time these bills get in front of lawmakers, it becomes more likely that they will be able to pass down the road, and this incremental progress truly helps public lands protections get closer to the finish line.

Whether these bills pass along with the NDAA or through a larger public lands and recreation package this year, our voices of support now will help make it happen.

Take two minutes to send a letter today:

News, Library, Action AlertTania Lown-HechtNDAA, public lands packageComment