Wild Sky Wilderness

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The Wild Sky Wilderness is a 106,577-acre (431 km²) wilderness area in the western Cascade Range of Washington state. The wilderness is within the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest north of the U.S. Highway 2 towns of Index and Skykomish. The wilderness flanks, but does not include, the North Fork Skykomish River and the Beckler River. The Henry M. Jackson Wilderness is adjacent to the east and northeast.

The Wild Sky Wilderness is significant because it is the first new federally-designated wilderness in Washington since 1984. Also, unlike many other wilderness areas in the Cascades, Wild Sky protects significant amounts of high biological productivity low-elevation forest.

1 Legislative history
2 Private Land
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Legislative history

The Wild Sky Wilderness required several legislative attempts before becoming law, despite broad local support. Prior to 2007, the Wild Sky bill was blocked in committee by Rep. Richard Pombo of California, who was not reelected in 2006. President George W. Bush had been receptive to the proposal.

In February 2007, Senator Patty Murray and Rep. Rick Larsen introduced legislation to designate the Wild Sky as wilderness. The bill then passed the House and had been approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Before the bill came to the Senate floor, however, it was put on "hold" by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, and never reached a vote.^[1]

Reintroduced in 2008, The Wild Sky Wilderness passed the U.S. Senate on April 10, 2008^[2], and then passed the U.S. House of Representatives a little less than three weeks later on April 29.^[3] President Bush signed the Wilderness into law on May 8, 2008.^[4]

Mike Town was heavily involved in this project and could be considered the citizen responsible for the legislation.

[edit] Private Land

When the Wild Sky Wilderness was first proposed, about 2,000 acres of private land (inholdings) were within its boundaries. Since 2003 the Wilderness Land Trust and Cascade Land Conservancy have purchased about one-third of this amount. Efforts continue to acquire the remaining inholdings.