Colorado Wilderness Act of 2021

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRAVES of Louisiana. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, we have listened to our friends on the other side of the aisle talk about their desire for protecting wilderness areas and our natural resources, and I want to commend them for that. I agree with them, we need to do a better job doing that.

As we have had an opportunity to talk in the past, Mr. Speaker, in a previous life I taught mountaineering courses, I led climbing trips, I led mountain biking trips, kayaking, and was a river guide. I spent more time out in these very areas that they are talking about than every single one of them sitting there combined. It is what I did. It is how I lived for years.

And, Mr. Speaker, listening to this talk, I see an extraordinary disconnect, and let me be very clear. I have heard people saying that this is going to promote economic development and promote recreational opportunity. Mr. Speaker, that is not true. It is not fact.

As a matter of fact, what happens under this legislation in these designations is that those very recreational opportunities that create economic activity are actually eliminated. They are prohibited under this act.

You cannot do things like mountain biking. I will say, they finally came back and made some adjustments on wilderness areas where you can leave descending devices--thank you--but you can't do these things.

So how in the world are you going to make more money and have more economic activity?

Are they going to offer unicorn rides?

You can't do that. This doesn't work. It doesn't make sense. We are not following the regular process you do to evaluate wilderness areas.

What happened last Congress--we have a new Member of Congress who represents three-quarters of this area and she wasn't given an opportunity to be consulted. Amendments to allow local governments and maybe the citizens were rejected. Let them make a decision here.

Mr. Speaker, why were those ideas rejected?

I had an amendment that simply said that we should allow best practices in wildfire management. That was prohibited. We have had seven million acres of this very area burned and we are prohibiting the best practices in wildfire management.

Mr. Speaker, I want to know what they are going to tell their constituents and other people's constituents when these areas burn because of their irresponsible activities.

Mr. Speaker, I urge rejection of this legislation.

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