Salazar strikes back at critics of ‘wild lands’ policy, hopes for ‘common ground’

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Thursday struck back at critics of his “Wild Lands” conservation initiative, comments that come days after the House approved GOP legislation to block funding for the program.

“I think there are people who have made more of this issue than they should have, including people who are doing it for whatever political agenda they want to serve,” Salazar said during wide-ranging remarks on conservation at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Salazar in December announced the “Wild Lands” program, which involves designating and managing certain public lands to protect their wilderness characteristics. Many western Republicans blasted the policy, calling it an end-run around Congress that could block oil-and-gas drilling and other development.

The federal spending package the House approved last week would prevent Interior from using fiscal year 2011 funds to implement the program.

But Salazar noted that a slew of House Republicans have introduced bills in this Congress to protect areas in their states, including House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who leads the Appropriations Committee panel that controls Interior’s spending.

“Wilderness is not a bad thing and they recognize it,” Salazar noted, and said there is a need to “tone down the rhetoric.”

“We in the United States have some very special places — they are not Republican places, they are not Democratic places, they are not independent places, they belong to all of us,” he said.

“I think we can find some common ground,” Salazar said.