New National Parks and More Wilderness Areas Coming Soon

The House of Representatives today passed a HUGE bill that would create new national parks and set aside millions of acres as wilderness.

Sacbee.com: Dubbed the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, the measure pulled together more than 150 separate public lands, parks and water bills into one package. Among other things, the legislation designates 2 million acres of additional wilderness in nine states and 1,000 miles of new wild and scenic rivers. It creates three new national park units, one new national monument and 10 new national heritage areas.

Provisions in the bill range from honoring President Bill Clinton’s birthplace in Arkansas to creating a national institute for the study of caves. It designates a Wyoming river as wild and scenic, creates a geologic trail that tracks cataclysmic ice age floods and requires the government to research the problem of increasingly acidic oceans.

One provision, for instance, names a new wilderness in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains after former California Rep. John Krebs. The measure creating the John Krebs Wilderness was first introduced in 2002.