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Robert Frank, City Editor frank@heraldnet.com

Wild Sky Wilderness must wait until 2008

By Jerry Cornfield
Herald Writer

Wild Sky Wilderness will not be created this year after all.

The U.S. Senate adjourned Wednesday without acting on legislation to establish Washington's first new wilderness area in two decades.

This is a delay, not an end, to the effort because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vowed in his session- closing floor speech to bring it and other stalemated legislation to a vote early in the 2008 session.

That was good news for the bill's author, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

"This has been a series of battles. We are not giving up. This will get done. This is just one hurdle," she said.

"The difference between today and yesterday is the majority leader has let everyone know this will be one of our first items of business," she said, adding it could reach the floor by mid-February.

Three times -- in 2002, 2003 and 2005 -- the Wild Sky bill passed the Senate only to die in the House of Representatives.

With Democrats in the majority, the measure passed the House in April.

Murray spoke confidently of having it in front of President Bush for signing by the summer.

But Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., put his foot on it, using his power as a senator to place a hold on any piece of legislation. In this case, he tied up a package of roughly 50 bills dealing with public lands, including Wild Sky.

Rather than try to forcibly free it up through a floor fight, Murray and her party's leaders sought compromise with Coburn, but he wouldn't budge.

"This has been extremely frustrating because Wild Sky has been caught in an overall philosophy of an extremely small number of senators whose goal is to simply stop all of the nation's business," she said.

The proposed 106,000-acre wilderness is on U.S. Forest Service land between the towns of Index and Skykomish, along the Beckler River and the North Fork Skykomish River.

It would be just west of the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness, which was established in 1984 and was named after the late Everett senator.

Wilderness designation would give lowland old-growth trees, scenic rivers, rolling meadows and craggy Cascade peaks the strongest protection afforded by federal land.

There is, and has been, strong opposition to the wilderness proposal from county farmers and ranchers -- and from sport enthusiasts such as snowmobilers, who would be unable to ride within parts of the designated area.

The House vote is good until the current session of Congress ends in November 2008.

U.S. Rep. Larsen, D-Wash., who carried the legislation in the House, remains confident it will get through.

"We are closer than ever to the end of the trail," he said in a statement released by his office Wednesday.

Mike Town, founder of Friends of Wild Sky, offered a similar sentiment.

"I'm actually not totally disappointed," he said. "We know the Senate moves slowly. I still have a lot of optimism that the bill will get passed. From right now we have almost a year."