Most Americans tend to think of the “greening” of our lifestyle as a fairly recent phenomenon. After all, the media is full of expert advice on how you can go green, from what you wear to how you wrap a gift.

What many Americans fail to realize is that past generations made efforts to preserve the land, but they weren’t always greeted with as much fanfare as these efforts are today, or even with the same level of acceptance.

Lyndon Johnson, whom most people associate with the escalation of the Vietnam War, actually took an important step toward conserving our national heritage when he signed the Wilderness Act into law on September 3, 1964. This legislation established the National Wilderness Preservation System, which placed a large number of federally managed land areas that were in pristine condition under its protection. According to Wilderness.net, ”When the Wilderness Act was passed in 1964, 54 areas (9.1 million acres) in 13 states were designated as Wilderness. These areas established the National Wilderness Preservation System. Since 1964, the System has grown almost every year and now includes 704 areas (107,361,680 acres) in 44 states.” The Preservation System also became the central clearinghouse for the activities of four federal agencies: the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Placing the wilderness zones in a protected management category, as well as coordinating the work of the four federal agencies is meant to do one thing — keep these lands in their pristine state. However, there is another side to all of this, and that is the management of human traffic in these territories.

When Congress designates a wilderness area as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System, it means that human activities are restricted to those which will not permanently alter the natural landscape in any way. That means that recreational things like backpacking, hunting, and fishing are allowed, but commercial enterprise activities like logging, mining, and oil and natural gas development are definitely on the not-to-do list.

This is the backdrop against which a very important piece of environmental legislation is pending a vote in the House of Representatives — The Omnibus Land Act of 2009 (PDF). The bill is a collection of over 150 public land bills that were reported from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during the last Congress for which there had not been unanimous consent. This bill represents the largest public land protection attempt in approximately 15 years, and the largest increase of wilderness acreage in over 25 years.

In addition, there are some non-public-land measures that have been added to the bill, like the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act, which among other things, authorizes a greenhouse facility for the Smithsonian Institution, the Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program Act, the Smithsonian Institution Facilities Authorization Act of 2008, and the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Reservation Water Rights Settlement Act.

While on the surface this appears to be a win-win situation for the environment, this bill is not without its detractors. The loudest voice seems to be coming from Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s executive vice president of Government Affairs. In a letter addressed to the Senate that was designed to turn members against the bill before a vote was taken, Josten said the bill “substantially hampers energy development and private-property rights by withdrawing millions of acres of land from oil and gas exploration.”

He went on to add that, “Shackling U.S. energy exploration and development at this critical time would substantially jeopardize America’s already fragile economy.”

The crux of Josten’s argument against the bill is that oil and gas companies will be barred from 1.2 million acres of land in Wyoming, which means sacrificing almost 300 million barrels of recoverable oil and 8.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That’s only the tip of the iceberg as far as Josten is concerned, because another 2.1 million U.S. acres would be designated as wilderness areas, which takes them off the market in terms of any new oil and gas leases.

So at this crossroads in its history, what does America do? Does it preserve land at the expense of fueling an already overwhelming recession? Or does it put ecology on hold to get the economy up and running again? The Senate came down on the side of conservation when it passed the bill on January 15th. Now it’s time for the members of the House of Representatives to make that decision. It may be one of the most crucial votes these legislators will have to make this year.