Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chairwoman, when I chaired the Public Lands Subcommittee, we set three overarching principles for the management of our public lands: to restore public access to the public lands, to restore good management to the public lands, and to restore the Federal Government as a good neighbor to those communities directly impacted by the public lands.

This bill appears to me to be the opposite of all of these principles. It closes off public use and access, it consigns our lands to a policy of neglect, and it thumbs our nose at the wishes of many of the people in the affected region.

H.R. 823 is a lopsided bill that offers a comparatively small, 28,000 acres, for motorized access versus roughly 400,000 acres of new wilderness enclosures. So 7 percent of the land is provided for motorized access and 93 percent of the land is closed to that access. That means, Madam Chair, you can't drive in to enjoy a family camping trip, and you can't even bring bicycles.

It withdraws all these lands from any kind of resource development, which means that taxpayers will not have the benefit of revenues that these lands could produce. Much of the acreage designated for wilderness restrictions does not even meet the legal requirements under the Wilderness Act, and yet they are imposed in disregard of that law. So, so much for the public's right to use the public lands.

As the growing menace of wildfires attests, 45 years of neglect of sound forest management due to the so-called environmental laws of the 1970s has abandoned our forests to themselves, and like any untended garden, an abandoned forest will grow and grow and grow until it chokes itself to death, and it is then consumed by catastrophic wildfire. Modern forest management broke this cycle of morbid overgrowth followed by catastrophic wildfire. I can tell you, in a State with a significant wildfire risk, this bill would further reduce the acres that have been identified as suitable for active forest management by approximately 8,000 acres. So, so much for good management of the public lands.

This bill flies in the face of significant local opposition, as expressed by many of the locally elected representatives of the communities affected by this legislation, as we have heard from Mr. Tipton. Rural county commissioners have warned that this bill will harm the economies of their local communities by removing multiple-use designations from these lands. In fact, when Republicans offered an amendment calling for consultation with the local communities that have been ignored by this legislation, that amendment was rejected on a party-line vote. So, so much for being a good neighbor to communities most affected by the Federal lands.

Now, in the past, the Natural Resources Committee has prided itself on attempting to forge bipartisan consensus on its bills. Those days appear to be over. In fact, 65 percent of the lands affected by H.R. 823 aren't even in the author's district. They are in the district of Mr. Tipton, who has just expressed his significant concerns over this legislation, who was never consulted before the bill was introduced, and who was barred from engaging the bill's sponsor during the committee's consideration of the bill on April 2. In this kangaroo proceeding, the bill's author acted as a witness, an advocate, and the chairman of the proceeding all at the same time.

Every Republican Member from Colorado opposes this bill, and the bill is reported to us on a straight party-line vote. It is obvious that the majority has no interest in balancing the concerns of local residents, taxpayers, recreational user groups, and conservation groups, but instead feels entitled to impose its will over the pleas of the people most directly impacted. Fortunately, our system of government assures that such legislation, while it might pass one House, as I am sure it will tomorrow, but it will have no chance of becoming law--and rightly so.

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