DENVER – The National Wildlife Federation and 24 of its state affiliates oppose a bill that would for the first time open our country’s most wild places to mountain biking.

The wildlife and sportsmen’s organizations wrote letters asking members of Congress to reject the bill by Rep. Tom McClintock, which is before the House Natural Resources Committee Wednesday. It would fundamentally change the 1964 Wilderness Act by opening some of our most pristine wildlife habitat and remote places to activity that would bring big changes, said Tracy Stone-Manning, the National Wildlife Federation’s associate vice president for public lands.

“This bill is a solution in search of a problem. The National Wildlife Federation and our affiliates have long worked to ensure people have access to public lands to hunt, fish, hike, bike, camp and paddle. All of that and more are allowed on roughly 97 percent of our nation’s public lands,” Stone-Manning said. “Only 3 percent of our wild lands, the ‘untrammeled’ places set aside as wilderness, are closed to mountain biking to preserve solitude and pristine habitat in some of our last truly wild places. We need those places to remain wild for wildlife, for the health of the ecosystem – and for future generations.”

Read more about the National Wildlife Federation’s resolution on a wildlife disease trust fund.