The U.S. Senate passed a long-languishing wilderness-protection bill Thursday. (Apparently it’s land conservation week in Congress. Yay!) The Wild Sky Wilderness bill would protect 106,000 acres of national forest in Washington State, creating the first wilderness in the state since 1984. Similar legislation has passed the Senate three times since 2002, but was consistently stalled in the House by former Resources Committee Chair Richard Pombo. But Pombo was dethroned in Nov. 2006, and the House passed the bill in April 2007. The House will have to vote on the legislation one more time since the Senate passed it as part of a larger package of land-use measures, but the whole shebang is expected to be approved and signed into law.
