Source: Newsweek
By Benjamin Fearnow
March 13, 2019
President Donald Trump signed the country’s largest wilderness preservation legislation in a decade, providing widespread protections for Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks.
Trump’s signing of the National Resources Management Act, or S.47, marked a surprisingly overwhelming bipartisan congressional effort and began with the environmental protection bill introduced by Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski in January. The bill expands federally protected land, where there can be no logging, drilling, mining or road construction, and establishes 375,000 new acres of wilderness across California, Oregon, New Mexico and Utah. The bill passed the Senate with a vote of 92-8 and the House with a vote of 362-63.
