"PHOENIX - Arizona could see vast new federal wilderness areas if a Bush administration policy is reversed. Under a 1976 law, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had identified just over five percent of its 262 million acres of public lands as potential wilderness, until the process was halted by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
Today, groups like the Campaign for America's Wilderness (CAW) are pushing to restore the original policy. CAW Director Mike Matz says they are anxious for the BLM to resume its "wilderness inventories," the practice of identifying lands for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System.
"We are anxiously awaiting word here from the Interior Department whether or not Secretary Ken Salazar will revise this policy, overturn it, or somehow enable BLM to be able to go out and do its job under the law."
Lands picked by BLM as Wilderness Study Areas are protected until Congress decides whether they should be officially declared wilderness. Matz says there are millions of acres in the West that qualify."
Read more here . . .
http://www.leaveitwild.org/news/daily_clips/2288
