Urge Congress to co-sponsor and support the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act: "The Wildest Bill on Capitol Hill!"

We have some great news: The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) has been reintroduced in the U.S. House and Senate and now we could really use your help to help make this visionary Wilderness bill a reality!

NREPA is a science-based bill that would designate 23 million acres of Wilderness for some of America's most beautiful, wild, and ecologically important public lands in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, and Washington.

The U.S. Northern Rockies are surely near the top of the list of the world’s most spectacular landscapes. Its ranges contain one of the last great expanses of biodiversity left in the contiguous United States, including most of the native wildlife species like grizzly bears, wolves, bull trout, wolverines, and bison.

NREPA is also wilderness legislation as it should be—with no special provisions that chip away at the Wilderness Act or weaken the protections Wilderness needs.

In addition to designating 23 million acres of Wilderness, NREPA specifically:

• Designates a system of vital biological corridors connecting smaller ecosystems within the Northern Rockies, ensuring the continued existence of native plants and animals and mitigating the effects of climate change;

• Expands and provides greater protection for many existing Wilderness areas in the Northern Rockies by protecting their surrounding wildlands and their wild rivers;

• Establishes a number of wildland "recovery areas" that will provide jobs undoing damage caused by past destructive logging and roadbuilding;

• Designates 1,800 miles of rivers and streams as Wild and Scenic;

• Saves taxpayers $245 million over a 10-year period by eliminating subsidized logging and road-building in roadless areas that would be designated as Wilderness.

• President Biden has established a national goal to protect 30 percent of our nation’s lands by 2030. Existing Wildernesses, national parks, and other protected lands constitute 12 percent. NREPA represents over 3 percent of the lands that will need to be protected to meet the 30 percent goal, bringing the total from 12 percent to over 15 percent, or halfway to the goal. And NREPA does it in the right way by protecting large Wildernesses connected by biologically effective corridors that give wildlife of the Northern Rockies region the best possible chance to survive far into the future.

• The science is abundantly clear: the two most efficient, effective, and environmentally sound ways to address the climate crisis is to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses and to maintain our existing national forests, which absorb 10-13 percent of our country's carbon emissions.

You can help make this visionary Wilderness bill a reality by encouraging your members of Congress to co-sponsor and support the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act!