Yosemite.JPGPresident Obama has signed into law one of the most sweeping conservation and public land management bills in years. The legislation will protect 2 million acres of wilderness across the country, including 1,000 miles of wild and scenic rivers, by creating a national system to conserve land held by our Bureau of Land Management. 

The bill enacts preservation of some of America’s most special places – from Oregon’s Mount Hood to the dinosaur tracks of New Mexico to Virginia’s wild forests.

“We possess few blessings greater than the vast and varied landscapes that stretch the breadth of our continent,” said the president at the signing ceremony yesterday. “What these gifts require in return is our wise and responsible stewardship. ”

“As our greatest conservationist President, Teddy Roosevelt, put it almost a century ago, ‘I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.'”
 
“This legislation guarantees that we will not take our forests, rivers, oceans, national parks, monuments and wilderness areas for granted, but rather we will set them aside and guard their sanctity for everyone to share, passing them down to future generations,” Obama said at the signing ceremony. “That’s something all Americans can support.”  he added.

(Read more details at the Washington Post)

 

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