A welcome gain for the wilderness

Forget the bum economy for a minute. You just got richer. We all did. A lot richer.

After years of dawdling and fussing, both abetted by an indifferent-to-antagonist Bush administration, the House and Senate alike finally have passed an omnibus wilderness bill that will protect more than 2 million acres from despoliation. President Obama has said he will be pleased to sign.

The bill brings the highest level of federal protection to sites in nine states, from California to Virginia. Key sections of several national parks and monuments receive heightened security. A number of historic sites benefit.

National forests will be preserved against development encroachments. The nation's "wild and scenic" river system will be extended by a thousand miles, a 50 percent increase.

Our national parks, forests, historic sites and monuments are the nation's endowment, our trust fund for the country's future. They amount to a patrimony of incalculable worth.

Although impressive at 2 million-plus acres, this expansion is not radical in its scope. For the most part, it tidies up the 107 million acre wilderness system created when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness Act of 1964, later boldly expanded by President Jimmy Carter.

Even so, the expansion was too much for the bulk of Republican lawmakers, most of whom roundly denounced it as nothing more, and nothing better, than a government land grab. Only 38 House Republicans voted for the bill, just a fifth of the GOP caucus.

Approval by the Senate earlier had been a forgone conclusion, but passage by the iffy House wasn't assured until the Democratic leadership brought the bill to a vote under a no-amendment rule, balking a move to poison it with a provision to allow loaded firearms in national parks, which could have cost the bill key support.

As it is, the new protections come too late for the many areas the Bush administration papered with oil and natural gas leases, even though the oil and gas companies had yet to explore all of the leases they already were holding.

We still have a lot of catch-up to do. Legislators and presidents for years have been ritually extolling our park system as one of the nation's treasures, as indeed it is. But that easy and typically florid rhetoric has had a way of wilting at budget time. The parks have been allowed to go shabby from neglect. Even basic maintenance has suffered.

Obama's budget proposes at least a start against that default, with a $125 million boost. Just hope an increasingly skittish Congress agrees. The increase is only a down payment against what the National Parks Conservation Association judges to be an annual $750 million shortfall.

For now, hats in the air for the wilderness bill. The folksinger Woody Guthrie sang, "This land is your land, this land in my land." Today, that's 2 million acres more nearly so.