Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the amendment I am offering this afternoon is pretty straightforward. It would effectively release wilderness study areas if, within 1 year of receiving the recommendation, Congress has not designated this study area as wilderness. There has been a lot of discussion in the news of late with the President's announcement on Sunday that he is seeking to put an additional 12 million acres in the ANWR area--Alaska's North Slope-- into wilderness status, including the 1002 area which has specifically been designated for oil and gas exploration. I want to make sure people understand this is not just an ANWR amendment. This is about the wilderness study areas that we see that are currently on the books. According to the Congressional Research Service, as of the beginning of this year, Congress has designated 109.8 million acres of Federal land as wilderness. Just over half of this wilderness is in my State of Alaska. We have over 57 million acres of wilderness in Alaska. Ninety percent of the wilderness under the management of the Fish and Wildlife Service is in Alaska. As a practical matter, there is more out there. There are more acres that are proposed for wilderness designation. For example, the Bureau of Land Management manages 528 wilderness study areas containing almost 12.8 million acres located primarily in the 12 States in the West as well as Alaska. We also have the U.S.…”