In a ceremony yesterday, President Obama signed the Ominibus Public Land Management Act, which includes significant spending on mapping. In Obama’s words, the bill accomplishes many things:
“It designates more than 2 million acres across nine states as wilderness; almost as much as was designated over the past eight years combined.
It creates thousands of miles of new scenic, historic, and recreational trails, cares for our historic battlefields, strengthens our National Park System.
It safeguards more than 1,000 miles of our rivers, protects watersheds and cleans up polluted groundwater, defends our oceans and Great Lakes, and will revitalize our fisheries, returning fish to rivers that have not seen them in decades.
And it wisely faces our future challenges with regard to water. This bill assesses how growth and climate change will affect our access to water resources, especially in the West and Southwest, and it includes solutions to complex and long-simmering water disputes.”
