Access to public land

A bill passed by the House of Representatives Tuesday makes it harder to restrict hunting and fishing on public lands and ensures that hunters can continue to use lower-cost lead bullets.

The legislation, which passed 274-146, also allows those who've legally hunted polar bears in Canada to bring their trophies home.

Democratic opponents said the bill was unnecessary because 85 percent of federal land is already open to hunting. They called it a sop to the shadowy "gun lobby."

The measure requires federal land managers to support hunting and fishing on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land. It provides that the BLM can close public lands to recreational shooting only for specific reasons such as national security and fire safety, and must submit a report to Congress detailing the evidence justifying any closure.

The lead provision addresses efforts by environmentalists to ban the use of lead in ammunition and fishing tackle. They contend lead poisoning kills 10 million to 20 million birds and other animals each year and that hunters who eat what they hunt have also registered higher levels of lead in their bloodstreams.

(In fact, the authors of that 2009 report, said in a related report that no study participants showed lead concentrations higher than the CDC recommended threshold.)

The Environmental Protection Agency, in 2010 and again this year, rejected petitions from conservation groups to ban lead bullets, shotgun pellets and fishing tackle under the Toxic Substances Control Act, saying the issue was not within the agency's jurisdiction.

Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., a main sponsor of the bill, noted that "with very limited exceptions, there is simply no sound evidence that the use of traditional ammunition is causing harm to wildlife or their population."

All in all, this is a wise bill, designed to assure continued access to public lands by sportsmen. The House has moved firmly to beat back attacks by extremists who pay lip service to such traditional land-use rights, but whose real agenda is hard to miss, given their accompanying full-court press for road closures, "wilderness" designations and the like.