Sponsor
French Hill
Representative · R-AR
Representative · R-AR
The bill permanently protects and formalizes a wilderness addition—improving conservation, recreation, and wildfire-management clarity—while imposing use restrictions, affirming agency treatment authority that some may oppose, and creating modest administrative and economic costs.
Rural communities and outdoor visitors gain permanent protection for the Flatside Wilderness addition, preserving recreation, scenic lands, wildlife habitat, and water quality.
Land managers may treat wildfires, insect outbreaks, and disease in the wilderness, enabling quicker mitigation on the ground to protect forests and nearby communities.
The bill affirms and preserves the existing regulatory framework for treatments, reducing legal uncertainty for agencies and contractors carrying out mitigation work.
Local land users, hunters, and nearby private landowners will face new or affirmed wilderness restrictions (limits on motorized access, logging, and similar uses) while the bill also affirms agency authority to perform mechanized treatments that some recreationists and conservationists oppose.
Taxpayers and local governments could incur modest administrative and management costs (land management or acquisition, updating maps/signs/databases), and nearby stakeholders may face economic or access impacts from agency actions (temporary closures, contracts) undertaken without new public-review requirements.
Short-term confusion may occur for visitors and emergency responders while older maps and materials remain in use until agency updates propagate.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Adds a proposed addition to the Flatside Wilderness listing and renames part of the Flatside Wilderness as the Flatside‑Bethune Wilderness.
Adds a named proposed addition to the Flatside Wilderness listing in the Arkansas Wilderness Act of 1984 and renames a portion of the Flatside Wilderness as the "Flatside-Bethune Wilderness." The bill preserves the Secretary of Agriculture’s existing authority to manage fire, insects, and disease in the wilderness consistent with current law. No funding, deadlines, or new agency programs are created; the change is primarily a statutory listing and a renaming of a specified wilderness area for use in federal laws, maps, and records.
Official title: To designate the Flatside-Bethune Wilderness in the Ouachita National Forest, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 26, 2025 by French Hill · Last progress October 21, 2025