The GOP-drafted bill would limit protections of bighorn sheep, end new funding to list endangered species and cut the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by nearly one-third.

The wide-ranging legislation was approved Thursday by the House Interior and the Environment Appropriations Subcommittee under the chairmanship of Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho.

The bill cuts 2012 spending for the Department of the Interior, the EPA and related agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, by $2.1 billion from this year’s budget.

Whether any of the riders proposed by Simpson and other Republicans survive — or the 12 percent in extra cuts the bill lops off President Barack Obama’s budget — may be decided in the deficit-reduction talks ongoing between Obama and congressional leaders.

“I don’t know how they will affect the 2012 budget,” Simpson said Thursday. “Maybe we’ll have to come back with another bill.”

PUSHING FOR CHANGES

Simpson said the riders he added were designed to force the agencies, stakeholders and even Congress to find solutions to long-standing problems. His most controversial was the cut of funds for listing endangered species.

Simpson said 28 percent of the appropriations his committee makes are for past acts that have not been reauthorized by Congress.

The Endangered Species Act has not been fully reauthorized for more than 20 years. Instead, the ESA gets temporarily reauthorized annually without updates and reforms that people on both sides of the aisles agree on, Simpson said.

He wants the committees with jurisdiction over the act and other authorizing laws to get busy.

“What we’re trying to do is kick some people in the butt,” Simpson said, adding that “most people agree there are reforms” that need to be made.

But Defenders of Wildlife, one of the key groups in the debate, said Simpson was simply “doing the bidding” of special-interest groups that don’t want new species listed or existing endangered species protected.

“This bill places the special interests above the desires of the American people and the interests of future generations,” said Defenders President Rodger Schlickeisen.

SLOWING PROTECTION

Several of the riders had a different goal: stalling new rules and programs.

They include:

Æ A provision instituting a one-year prohibition on the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources.

Æ One that prohibits the EPA from changing the definition of “navigable waterways” under the Clean Water Act.

Æ A rider that allows the BLM and Forest Service to reduce grazing permit backlogs while focusing on the most environmentally sensitive areas.

Simpson said the riders are intended to provide the regulatory certainty needed for economic growth.

But sportsman groups were especially critical of the Clean Water Act rider.

“Apparently, the House Appropriations Committee is not hearing the news of oil spilling into the Yellowstone River, human health-threatening algal blooms in Oklahoma reservoirs and the expanding ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf,” said Steve Moyer, a Trout Unlimited vice president.

IDAHO’S SHEEP FIGHT

At the request of the Idaho Wool Growers Association, Simpson added a provision to slow the phasing out of 70,000 acres of domestic grazing on the Payette National Forest until a vaccine can be developed that could prevent a deadly disease from being transmitted from domestic sheep to wild bighorn sheep.

Craig Gehrke, director of the Boise office of the Wilderness Society, was skeptical that delaying the Payette decision will lead to a solution. He said the Payette’s process, which protects bighorns in their most important habitat, is the alternative to listing the wild sheep under the federal Endangered Species Act.

“For seven years we’ve been trying to find a way to protect bighorns without going to an endangered species listing, and Simpson just drug the rug out from under us,” Gehrke said.

The Payette decision set a national precedent that could force domestic sheep to be moved out of other public lands to protect the bighorns.

Margaret Soulen Hinson, president of the American Sheep Industry Association, has been hopeful that a vaccine will make it more manageable to separate the two species without forcing domestic sheep off public land. Her family’s business is directly affected by the Payette decision.

“We obviously had a species of wildlife that has issues with die-offs, and it needs to be resolved,” she recently told the Idaho Statesman’s Business Insider. “Is it fair to just blame the domestic sheep industry? I don’t think so.”

Gehrke said he’s frustrated by this and the other riders — and the earlier Simpson-supported legislation that took wolves off the endangered species list.,

“Do Western politicians see any place for native wildlife anymore, or do they all have to get out of the way for agricultural interests?” he asked.

MAJOR SPENDING CUTS

Environmentalists also were critical of cuts in the budget to the Land and Water Conservation Fund and other programs that help provide jobs in local communities. The $214 million spent from the fund, made up of shore oil royalties and used to acquire land in 2010, generated $442 million of economic activity, including 3,000 jobs, an Interior report said.

“What this means is that the cuts will soon decimate not just national and state parks, refuges and Bureau of Land Management lands, but also local businesses and the countless jobs built around the recreation and tourism industries,” said Wilderness Society President William Meadows.

But the deepest cuts were to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Add the appropriation bill to a continuing resolution passed in April, and EPA funding will have been reduced by 31 percent during the current calendar year.

But Simpson said this doesn’t mean Republicans don’t support clean air, clean water and a clean environment.

“The reality is that the EPA has received unprecedented and unsustainable increases in recent years,” Simpson said. “In an environment of historic budget deficits and reduced spending, it should come as no surprise that the agency that saw the greatest increases will inevitably see the greatest cuts.”

Rocky Barker: 377-6484