It's official: the Obama administration has given up on its "Wild Lands" policy. AP broke the news: "Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a memo to his agency that officials will not designate any public lands as "wild lands." Instead Salazar said the agency will work with members of Congress to develop recommendations for managing millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West."
The press release (pdf) puts on a positive spin, emphasizing that the Department of the Interior will collaborate with members of Congress, states, tribes, and local communities in managing the lands. However, the reality is different.
The "wild lands" policy was an effort to create wilderness-quality areas where Congress was unwilling to act. Only Congress can declare wilderness by passing a bill, and odds of getting wilderness bills through the House have been slim-to-none. Instead, the Administration attempted to declare that certain lands would be managed as though they were wilderness.
Wilderness-hating members of Congress were displeased. They blocked all funding to implement the Wild Lands policy.
Wilderness-hating Western governors, including those in Utah and Alaska, were equally displeased. They sued the Department of the Interior.
Today, the administration gave up on Wild Lands. Call it a cave-in or a recognition of reality.
The question remains whether the administration will be able to find any common ground with Western state governors and members of Congress on which to collaborate. It won't happen in Utah, home of the proposed Red Rocks Wilderness and wilderness-hating state politicians. The few wilderness bills with a chance of making it through Congress are either sponsored by influential Republicans, such as HR 41 (Darrell Issa's Beauty Mountain bill) or in Democratic states where stakeholders have been pleased will the bill, such as S. 1024 (Jeff Bingaman's Organ Mountains bill, pictured).