Sierra Club on House Passage of NDAA

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The House today passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Included among the provisions is a requirement that the Pentagon remove Confederate names, references, and symbols from American military bases within three years. Also included are measures to safeguard public lands and Tribal sites from an expanded military bombing range in Nevada, to protect the area around the Grand Canyon from toxic uranium mining, and to expand public lands, recreation and access in California, Colorado and Washington state. 

In response, Athan Manuel, director of public lands protection issued the following statement. 

“Passage of this legislation marks important progress toward correcting the harmful, and living, legacy of racism on public lands and toward crafting a future for public lands that leaves no one inside. Conserving more outdoor places, removing barriers to access and safe enjoyment of public lands, and including outdoor recreation as an economic solution will benefit us all.  These protections will also bring us closer to protecting the 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters that scientists say is needed to stem the climate and extinction crises. We urge the Senate to include these measures in their NDAA, and look forward to these provisions becoming law."

Among the public lands provisions in the NDAA are: 

• Colorado Wilderness Act: Designates almost 600,000 acres of wilderness including mid-elevation ecosystems often underrepresented in Colorado’s Wilderness lands. 

• Northwest California Wilderness, Recreation, and Working Forests Act: Enhances and preserves the region’s wilderness and public lands, expands the economic and recreational opportunities with more than 261,000 acres of Wilderness, 379 miles of wild and scenic rivers, and critical habitat designations for endangered salmon and steelhead.

• Horsford Amendment 342: Protects the Desert National Wildlife Refuge from a proposed expansion of an Air Force bombing range, enhances stewardship requirements for military on existing land, and increases Tribal access to ancestral land.

• Central Coast Heritage Protection Act: Secures lasting protections for the Los Padres National Forest and Carrizo Plain. 

• San Gabriel Mountains Foothills and Rivers Protection Act: Preserves wild space in one of the most park poor regions of the country, providing easily accessible outdoor recreation for Los Angelenos and safeguarding the watershed for one-third of L.A.’s drinking water. 

• Rim of the Valley Corridor Preservation Act: Expands the boundary of Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area by roughly 191,000 acres to include sites ranging from the Santa Clarita Valley to Griffith Park. 

• Wild Olympics Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers Act: Designates 126,000 acres of wilderness, the first new wilderness on Olympic National Forest in nearly three decades, and 464 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers, the first-ever protected on the Olympic Peninsula. The preservation of these lands and waters not only ensures the ecological integrity of these beloved lands but expands world-class outdoor recreation opportunities. 

• Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy (CORE) Act: Protects 400,000 acres of public lands including 73,000 acres of new wilderness and roughly 80,000 acres of recreation and conservation management areas, including the designation of the first-ever National Historic Landscape for Camp Hale to honor the Army’s famed 10th Mountain Division.  

• Grand Canyon Centennial Protection Act: Protects almost one million acres, north and south of the iconic Grand Canyon National Park, from new mineral extraction activities, especially uranium mining.  As of February 2018, there were more than 800 active mining claims in the area.

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