Sponsors (9)
Introduced March 27, 2025 by Sheldon Whitehouse · Last progress March 27, 2025
The bill secures large-scale, long‑term conservation, water-quality, and recreation benefits (and stronger tribal protections and monitoring), but does so by restricting extractive and motorized uses, shifting management costs to government and taxpayers, and creating regulatory and legal impacts for industries, landowners, and some local communities.
Rural gateway communities, outfitters, and small businesses will get long-term protection of large tracts of public land that supports recreation and tourism economies (hiking, fishing, wildlife viewing), sustaining jobs and local services.
Downstream communities, municipalities, and agricultural water users will benefit from stronger watershed protections and water-quality restoration that can reduce treatment and irrigation costs and protect drinking-water sources.
Wildlife, endangered species, and ecosystems will gain improved connectivity and habitat recovery from protected corridors, roadless protections, and targeted restoration, helping biodiversity and long‑term ecosystem resilience.
Workers and businesses in timber, mining, oil & gas, and other extractive industries—plus counties that rely on those revenues—face substantial reduced access to resources and potential job losses where lands and corridors are restricted or designated wilderness.
People and businesses that rely on motorized access (ATVs, snowmobiles, outfitting, motorized hunting) will lose or see constrained access on newly designated wilderness and corridor lands, reducing some recreation activity and income for outfitters.
Implementation, restoration, mapping, monitoring, and enforcement will increase federal administrative responsibilities and likely require new taxpayer funding or budget reallocations, creating ongoing costs and potential strain on agency resources.
Based on analysis of 26 sections of legislative text.
Designates new wilderness areas, wild & scenic river segments, biological corridors, and wildland recovery areas across five states and sets protections, restoration, and monitoring requirements.
Designates large tracts of National Forest, National Park, and BLM public lands across Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming as new wilderness areas, wild and scenic river segments, biological connecting corridors, and wildland recovery areas; sets protections that limit road building, logging, mining, and new development in those areas; and requires restoration, monitoring, and reporting (including a National Academy of Sciences review) to recover and maintain roadless, aquatic, and wildlife-connectivity values. The law preserves federal water rights, protects Tribal access and cultural uses, and directs the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior to prepare maps, management plans, and multi-year restoration and monitoring actions with measurable goals and some multiagency coordination and public-private participation.