In the annals of modern preservation, the "Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act" may prove to be the boldest stroke yet of a Congress unbound from the restrictions placed on new wilderness designations over the last decade, when Republicans controlled Washington.

As envisioned by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and 91 co-sponsors, the bill -- currently under review by the House Resources Committee -- would extend the government's highest protective status to 24 million acres in five states: Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.

That is more than 10 times the 2.1 million acres of new wilderness designated by Congress in March under the "Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009," and, if approved, would become the second largest one-time wilderness designation since 1980, when Congress added 56 million acres to the National Wilderness Preservation System, including a 9.7-million-acre designation for Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.

Proponents of the measure say the bill is commensurate to the need for protection, particularly in the West where industrial and residential development pressures have put millions of acres of pristine land at risk.

"The fact that this bill is so large is an indication of how much unprotected forestland is left in the Northern Rockies," said Bob Ekey, regional director of the Wilderness Society's Northern Rockies office in Bozeman, Mont.

But while the scope of the proposal has excited conservationists and drawn support from celebrities like singer/songwriter Carole King, its passage would have dramatic implications for the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, which would bear most of the responsibility for implementing and enforcing the wilderness designations.

Both BLM and the Forest Service adhere to the "multiple use" principle of land management, which makes room for oil and gas drilling, minerals mining and timber harvesting alongside priorities such as habitat protection and recreation.

Wilderness areas are by their very definition sanctuaries of quiet solitude, or as the 1964 law states, areas "where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." In practical terms, that means only the lightest-impact human activities can occur, such as hiking, canoeing and in some cases limited hunting and fishing.

And while experts believe the Northern Rockies wilderness bill is at best months away from a floor vote in either chamber, industry groups and their allies worry that such a designation, if approved, could stifle all forms of energy development -- including renewable energy projects -- and impede the construction of transmission lines needed to move that new power generation to population centers.

"From Washington, D.C., Congress pushes for alternative energy from wind and the sun. But how can we get that power, and create green jobs in the process, if we can't build transmission grids across our lands once [the bill] passes?" Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) testified last month before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.

Not a single member of the congressional delegations in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho -- where the vast majority of land would be designated wilderness -- supports the bill.

Conflicting priorities

Meanwhile, the situation has placed the Obama administration in a difficult situation as many of the president's key congressional allies push a bill that could directly conflict with the White House's push to expand renewable energy.

The $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains a lucrative production tax credit for wind development, creating a glut of new applications to build such projects on federal land. BLM and the Forest Service, meanwhile, announced last year they will open roughly 190 million acres in the West to renewable energy development: BLM will open 118 million acres for wind, solar, geothermal proposals, while the Forest Service will consider geothermal projects on 72 million acres of national forest.

Mike Olsen, a former Interior Department senior administrator who now works for law firm Bracewell & Giuliani's environmental strategies group, said the two agencies have demonstrated through their oil and gas lease programs that energy development can be done in an environmentally responsible way and that locking up millions of acres of federal lands with high energy development potential would be a mistake.

Roughly 99,000 acres of Montana's Lolo National Forest could receive wilderness designation under legislation currently being considered in the House of Representatives. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service.

"We don't need to create wilderness though the entire western U.S." Olsen said. "It's not necessary."

Leaders in Wyoming say they do not need a formal analysis of the bill's energy development impacts to understand how 5 million acres of new wilderness in the state would ripple across the economy.

"The impacts of this are pervasive -- from agriculture to recreation to access to mineral development [to] oil and gas mining," said Ryan Lance, Wyoming Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal's deputy chief of staff. "If this thing goes through, it turns everything on its head for most of the northwest corner of the state."

While new wilderness designations would be less likely to affect turbine construction in Wyoming's south-central wind region, new restrictions associated with wilderness could circumvent the siting of transmission lines needed to carry electricity from wind farms to energy markets beyond the state's orders.

If wind-power developers cannot move the electricity they generate, they won't be building in Wyoming, Lance said.

Other Northern Rockies states -- including those with lands in the newly designated West-wide Energy Corridor -- could face the same problems.

The 6,000-mile right-of-way concept includes federal lands in 11 states, including the five states with lands earmarked for wilderness designation under in the Northern Rockies bill. The Interior and Agriculture departments, which manage most of the public lands in the affected states, formally adopted the West-wide corridor concept into their resource management plans late last year, and the Obama administration has said it is committed to making the corridor concept work.

That committment, combined with President Obama's stalwart support of expanding renewable energy in the West, could be part of the reason the new administration has been hesitant to embrace the Northern Rockies wilderness bill.

"If you're a conservationist, it sounds like a really good idea," said Aaron Clark, Freudenthal's special adviser on energy infrastructure issues. "But when it comes to what happens on the ground, it creates such a muck hole no one can manage.

"We know how to manage our lands here, and we don't need Washington telling us how to do it," Clark added.

Roadless in Idaho

In neighboring Idaho, government leaders, industry representatives and some environmentalists fear the wilderness proposal could wipe out two years of careful negotiations over how to protect the state's 9.3 million acres of roadless forest.

Scenic landscapes marked by wildflowers like silvery lupine and fireweed could receive even greater protections under the "Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act." Photo courtesy of Susan Marsh, Bridger-Teton National Forest.

Idaho is the only one of 39 states with inventoried roadless areas to take advantage of a Bush administration policy that allowed states to decide which areas in national forests will be protected from roads and other development. The policy was intended to overturn the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a Clinton administrative initiative that set aside 58.5 million acres of pristine forest from almost all forms of development.

Idaho's plan divided its roadless forests into sections based on designated uses, with some areas allowing for limited logging and mining.

But the Northern Rockies wilderness legislation would override those designations and designate all 9.3 million acres of Idaho roadless areas as wilderness.

Conservationists who helped craft the state roadless plans expressed mixed feelings about the wilderness bill.

"On one level I'm a wildlife advocate, and I think that [a wilderness designation] would be great," said Rick Johnson, executive director of the Idaho Conservation League. But, he added, "This clearly is a legislative initiative intended to impose a national solution to a region."

"While idealistically I would support the substance of it, I really am skeptical about the politics," Johnson said.

Click here to review the text of the bill.

Scott Streater is a freelance journalist based in Colorado Springs, Colo.