The $839 bil­lion Nation­al Defense Autho­riza­tion Act (NDAA), approved Thurs­day by the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives was qui­et­ly amend­ed before pas­sage to include Washington’s next major pub­lic lands preser­va­tion effort.

A decade in ges­ta­tion, the Wild Olympics Wilder­ness and Wild and Scenic Rivers Act would pro­tect 126,500 acres as wilder­ness – por­tions of Olympic Nation­al For­est sur­round­ing the name­sake nation­al park – while extend­ing Wild and Scenic Riv­er sta­tus to nine­teen rivers and tributaries.

The House had already passed Wild Olympics leg­is­la­tion ear­li­er this ses­sion, but the defense bill cre­ates anoth­er vehi­cle for the Sen­ate to com­plete action.

Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray talks with local lead­ers dur­ing an August 31st, 2021 Olympic Nation­al Park hike about the prog­no­sis for the Wild Olympics leg­is­la­tion in the Sen­ate (Offi­cial staff photo)

The leg­is­la­tion has already enjoyed a hear­ing before the Sen­ate Ener­gy and Nat­ur­al Resources Committee.

A pat­tern of wait-and-hur­ry-up describes action by Con­gress on land con­ser­va­tion mea­sures, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en Repub­li­can hos­til­i­ty toward wilder­ness des­ig­na­tion and species protection.

A must-pass vehi­cle is identified.

Pro­pos­als by a siz­able num­ber of law­mak­ers are then bun­dled togeth­er, so every­body has skin in the game.

Allies are secured.

The late Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Har­ry Reid used wan­ing days of Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol in 2014 to cre­ate a lega­cy pack­age of wilder­ness pro­tec­tion, much of it in Neva­da but also long-pend­ing wilder­ness pro­pos­als in oth­er states.

Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, D‑Washington, stepped in to tack on expan­sion of our Alpine Lakes Wilder­ness Area, and pro­tec­tion under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act for the Mid­dle Fork-Sno­qualmie Riv­er, the clos­est moun­tain val­ley to Cen­tral Puget Sound’s pop­u­la­tion cen­ters of Seat­tle and Bellevue.

A bipar­ti­san duo, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene and Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dave Reichert, worked as Sher­pas to assure House passage.

Ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Doc Hast­ings, R‑Washington, who chaired the House Nation­al Resources Com­mit­tee, had blocked Alpine Lakes action for years. But the bill gave Doc some­thing he want­ed, con­tin­ued road access to the top of Rat­tlesnake Moun­tain north of Rich­land. The moun­tain is con­sid­ered sacred by the Yaka­ma Indi­an Nation. The leg­is­la­tion sailed through in wan­ing days of Congress.

If you want to know what’s at stake with Wild Olympics, pause at Lake Quin­ault on your next vis­it to the Penin­su­la. Ridges around the lake will get pro­tec­tion. The near­by 4,492’ Colonel Bob Moun­tain, a bear of a hike, was giv­en pro­tec­tion in the 1984 Wash­ing­ton Wilder­ness Bill.

Preser­va­tion adds up.

More than nine­ty-five per­cent of Olympic Nation­al Park – 876,447 acres to be exact – is pro­tect­ed under the Wilder­ness Act as the Daniel J. Evans Wilder­ness, named for the for­mer Repub­li­can sen­a­tor and gov­er­nor. With Wild Olympics, more than 200,000 acres of nation­al for­est land will enjoy sim­i­lar protection.

It all began more than 113 years ago, when Pres­i­dent Theodore Roo­sevelt set aside a 450,000-acre Olympic Nation­al Mon­u­ment to stop the slaugh­ter (for log­ging camp food) of the elk herds that now bear his name.

He also des­ig­nat­ed rock for­ma­tions off the coast as nation­al wildlife refuges.

A famous 1937 road trip around the Olympic Penin­su­la by Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt kin­dled FDR’s sup­port for our state’s largest nation­al park.

Con­ser­va­tion­ists had to beat back efforts to excise the Bogachiel Riv­er and oth­er rain­for­est val­leys from the park, a strug­gle recount­ed in Carsten Lien’s book “Olympic Bat­tle­ground.” U.S. Supreme Court Jus­tice William O. “Wild Bill” Dou­glas twice led back­packs along the park’s wilder­ness coast­line in a suc­cess­ful effort to block con­struc­tion of a beach­front road.

Wild Olympics was first pro­posed by then-Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Norm Dicks, D‑Washington, before his retire­ment from Con­gress in 2012. The legislation’s guid­ance fell to his suc­ces­sor, Rep. Derek Kilmer, D‑Washington.

U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Derek Kilmer (Offi­cial portrait)

Although a prod­uct of Prince­ton and Oxford, Kilmer grew up a Port Ange­les boy, with an acute sense of how to win sup­port in a region long sus­tained by log­ging. Kilmer held his own hear­ings and drew up his own leg­is­la­tion, team­ing with Murray.

Along with local greens, Kilmer has done a phe­nom­e­nal job. Wild Olympics has col­lect­ed eight hun­dred endorsers. Major busi­ness play­ers (e.g. Tay­lor Shell­fish), sportsmen’s groups, local may­ors (Port Ange­les, Port Townsend, Ocean Shores) and the Quin­ault, Quileute, Elwha and Jamestown Sk’allam tribes have sup­port­ed the plan.

Attach­ing Wild Olympics to the NDAA required help from an urban law­mak­er. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Smith, D‑Wash., chairs the House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee, a rare island of col­le­gial­i­ty in a sharply divid­ed Con­gress. Smith deliv­ered, and the autho­riza­tion bill passed on a 329–101 vote.

The state’s wilder­ness bat­tles once wit­nessed line­ups of fume-belch­ing log­ging trucks and coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers decry­ing the “lock­up” of “our resources.” The tim­ber indus­try field­ed front groups (e.g. the “Alpine Lakes Coali­tion”) and paid forestry pro­fes­sors to give wild­ly inflat­ed esti­mates of tim­ber to be “lost.”

As the econ­o­my has changed, and appre­ci­a­tion of wild­lands has grown, the pol­i­tics of preser­va­tion have grown more favorable.

Dan Evans per­suad­ed Repub­li­can Pres­i­dent Ger­ald Ford to sign the 1976 Alpine Lakes bill when Ford’s own agri­cul­ture sec­re­tary was urg­ing a veto.

Ronald Rea­gan signed into law the Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon Wilder­ness bills, and leg­is­la­tion cre­at­ing the Colum­bia Gorge Nation­al Scenic Area.

George W. Bush put his sig­na­ture on a bill to pro­tect the Wild Sky Wilderness.

Such is the love of Olympic wild places that the Penin­su­la has even seen rival hikes. In 2017, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion pro­posed open­ing vir­tu­al­ly all of the Out­er-Con­ti­nen­tal Shelf to oil and gas explo­ration. The 2016 Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Bill Bryant led a protest back­pack hon­or­ing the lega­cy of Theodore Roo­sevelt. Days lat­er, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son led Democ­rats along the beach, rec­og­niz­ing Franklin Roo­sevelt and William O. Douglas.

Our state’s sen­a­tors should get Wild Olympics through, in one form or anoth­er. Both have a track record: Wild Sky was a Mur­ray project, and she leaned on Pres­i­dent Clin­ton to des­ig­nate the Han­ford Reach Nation­al Mon­u­ment. Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, D‑Washington, used the 2020 Great Amer­i­can Out­doors Act to per­ma­nent­ly autho­rize and fund the Land and Water Con­ser­va­tion Fund, assur­ing fed­er­al dol­lars to acquire crit­i­cal wildlife and recre­ation lands.

As with back­pack trips through Olympic Penin­su­la wilder­ness, it helps when you have as com­pa­ny peo­ple who know what they’re doing.