Sponsors (9)
Introduced March 27, 2025 by Sheldon Whitehouse · Last progress March 27, 2025
The bill protects millions of acres of Northern Rockies land, waters, and wildlife—boosting water quality, recreation, biodiversity, and climate resilience—but does so by restricting extractive uses, motorized access, and some local land‑use flexibility, shifting economic activity and requiring increased federal management and funding.
Residents across the Northern Rockies gain long-term conservation of large landscapes and connected wildlife corridors, improving biodiversity, species migration, and climate resilience across millions of acres.
Downstream communities and visitors benefit from preserved watersheds and improved water quality and ecosystem services (cleaner drinking & irrigation water, erosion control, wildfire resiliency).
People and businesses that rely on outdoor recreation see protected scenic lands and recreational access that support tourism, guiding, lodging, and other outdoor-economy jobs and revenues.
Communities and workers in timber, mining, oil & gas, and other extractive sectors face reduced opportunities and potential job and revenue losses as large areas are withdrawn from commercial development and harvest.
Ranchers, off‑road users, hunters, and other local residents may lose or face limits on grazing, motorized access, and customary land uses as new wilderness, corridor, and roadless protections restrict access and activities.
Implementing and managing expanded protections will increase federal administrative requirements and spending (mapping, enforcement, restoration, acquisitions), which could raise taxpayer costs or require reallocation of federal funds.
Based on analysis of 26 sections of legislative text.
Designates large federal wilderness areas, wild and scenic rivers, biological corridors, and wildland recovery areas across five Western states and restricts new roads, mining, and many timber activities on those lands.
Designates and protects large areas of federal land across Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming by creating new wilderness areas, adding to existing wilderness, establishing wild and scenic river segments, creating biological connecting corridors, and identifying wildland recovery areas. It prohibits many new roads, large-scale timber harvesting, mining, and oil and gas development on those designated federal lands, establishes restoration and monitoring programs (including an independent scientific panel and regional GIS), preserves federal water rights, and affirms tribal access and confidentiality for cultural sites.