Sponsors (69)
Introduced March 27, 2025 by Melanie Ann Stansbury · Last progress March 27, 2025
The bill permanently protects large tracts of public land—benefiting conservation, Indigenous cultural protections, recreation, and ecosystem services—while limiting extractive uses and motorized access and creating additional management, legal, and local-planning costs.
All Americans (especially rural communities and wildlife-dependent communities) gain large, permanent protection of hundreds of thousands of acres by adding lands to the National Wilderness Preservation System, preserving habitat connectivity, scenic landscapes, and biodiversity.
Indigenous communities retain stronger legal protection for cultural, archaeological, medicinal, ceremonial, and subsistence places and see formal safeguards (including reserved water priority) that help secure cultural uses and resources.
Nearby residents and visitors benefit from conserved ecosystem services — cleaner air and water and protected wildlife habitat — which support public health, recreation, and local ecological resilience.
Miners, fossil‑fuel companies, and communities reliant on extractive industries lose or face restrictions on access to lands for mining, leasing, and energy development, which could reduce local jobs and economic activity.
Local residents and businesses that rely on motorized access, mechanized recreation, or certain traditional land uses (e.g., some grazing, off-road driving, mechanized trail access) will face new restrictions that limit how they use public lands.
Federal and local governments and taxpayers may incur higher management, enforcement, and litigation costs (including water-rights litigation and increased administrative burdens) to implement and defend new wilderness protections without guaranteed new funding.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Designates dozens of federal land units in western Utah as wilderness (51 named areas), adds them to the National Wilderness Preservation System, and reserves federal water rights for each area.
Designates dozens of federal land units in western Utah as wilderness and adds them to the National Wilderness Preservation System to protect cultural, ecological, and scenic values and preserve traditional public uses. Requires official maps and legal descriptions, directs management under existing law, provides for land exchanges with the State of Utah, reserves federal water rights for each new wilderness area, and sets procedural rules for administration and boundary adjustments.