Sponsors (14)
Introduced March 27, 2025 by Madeleine Dean · Last progress March 27, 2025
The bill significantly expands protected wilderness, rivers, and ecological corridors to boost water quality, biodiversity, and recreation—benefiting downstream communities, tribes, and local tourism economies—while imposing substantial limits on extractive uses and motorized access that may reduce local resource jobs, raise federal management costs, and create intergovernmental and legal tensions.
Rural communities, local governments, and small outdoor businesses: gain expanded and more stable recreation and tourism opportunities (hiking, hunting, fishing, wilderness tourism) as hundreds of thousands to millions of acres are added to wilderness, river, and corridor protections.
Downstream residents, municipalities, and agricultural users: receive improved and more secure water quality and watershed protection because designations and restoration actions limit damaging development and protect riparian systems.
Wildlife and communities that depend on healthy ecosystems (including hunters and fisheries): benefit from stronger habitat protections, wildlife corridors, and species-recovery measures that support biodiversity and climate-driven movement of species.
Timber, mining, oil & gas firms, ranchers, and workers in extractive sectors: will face reduced access and sales as new wilderness, corridor, and roadless protections restrict logging, mining, energy development, grazing, and road construction.
Taxpayers, federal budgets, and local governments: may incur higher and ongoing costs because land acquisition, restoration, long-term stewardship, monitoring, and enforcement require additional funding and agency resources.
Motorized-users, outfitters, some hunters, ranchers, and recreationists dependent on vehicle access: will lose or see limited motorized access and certain recreational uses where areas are managed to preserve wilderness character or undergo restoration.
Based on analysis of 26 sections of legislative text.
Designates large new wilderness areas, wild and scenic rivers, biological corridors, and recovery areas across five states, restricting roads, logging, mining, and development and requiring restoration and monitoring.
Designates large swaths of National Forest, National Park, and BLM lands across Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming as wilderness, wild and scenic rivers, biological connecting corridors, and wildland recovery areas, and sets new management rules and restoration requirements to protect habitat, water quality, and connectivity for native species. The law bans or limits new roads, most commercial logging and mineral development in many of the designated areas, requires federal agencies to prepare maps, recovery plans, and monitoring, establishes an independent scientific review panel and interagency team, and preserves tribal access and federal water rights.