Wild Olympics' Proposal Harnesses Economic Power of Public Lands, Supporters Say

A measure to protect land and waterways in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula will preserve environmental assets while creating jobs, supporters say. The days of “either/or” are over, says U.S. Representative Derek Kilmer (D) of Washington’s 6th District.
U. S. Representative Derek Kilmer is a native of his home district, raised by two educators in Port Angeles, Washington. The city of 19,000 is the largest along the 90-mile northern coast of the Olympic Peninsula .
Kilmer speaks fondly of a childhood, “hiking the Hoh, paddling the sound.” The representative is a creature of his Northwest Washington district, most of which is characterized by rural and public land.
Kilmer, who was first elected to Congress in 2012, believes that activities like these are one of the key economic engines for rural communities. “There’s a lot of money, a lot of income, in outdoor recreation.”
Kilmer, collaborating with Washington Senator Patty Murray, hopes to strengthen his district’s economy by expanding recreation opportunities in the Olympic region. Their Wild Olympics Wilderness and Wild and Scenic Rivers Act has a goal of protecting more than 126,500 acres of Olympic National Forest as wilderness along with 19 rivers and their tributaries. Working with community partners in the Wild Olympics Campaign, Kilmer said his bill “has an eye toward the notion that you can both protect land and support job creation. It’s not an either/or approach. It’s a both/and.”
Further quote: " Some citizens on the Olympic Peninsula are opposed to the Wild Olympics plans, calling it “Obama’s land deal power grab.” Critics say that a Wilderness designation would limit access to public land, decrease a needed focus on wildfire prevention, and increase the federal deficit. They point to a history of mismanagement of local federal lands that they say could signal trouble to come.
Representative Kilmer says that the 2017 proposal takes these criticisms into account. The current Wild Olympics proposal is an outgrowth of “extensive conversations with local communities, Native American tribes, the timber industry, environmental groups, and small business owners throughout the Peninsula. We’ve figured out to how to thread the needle.” Input from Peninsula communities ensured that the legislative proposal was designed to have no impact on timber jobs and close no roads. As local efforts for the proposal move ahead, more than 700 local elected officials, businesses, hunting and fishing groups, and sport fishing entrepreneurs endorsed the legislation."
Sources: Congressman Kilmer web page share news article from the Daily Yonder.
http://kilmer.house.gov/news/in-the-news/wild-olympics-proposal-harnesses-economic-power-of-public-lands-supporters-say




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