Legislation that would guarantee hunting and fishing rights on some federal land has provoked outrage among conservationists, who believe the proposal could eventually open places like Yosemite National Park and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to gun-toting mobs in camouflage.

The proposed law, known as the Recreational Fishing and Hunting Heritage and Opportunities Act, passed the House of Representatives in April with strong support from the National Rifle Association and is now being considered by the U.S. Senate.

The bill, introduced this year as HR4089 by Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., would ensure existing rights and increase opportunities for hunters, target shooters and anglers on U.S. Forest Service and federal Bureau of Land Management property.

The House bill, which is likely to be tinkered with in the Senate and reintroduced in a broader form, would essentially declare the federal land open to fishing and hunting unless a management agency specifically decides to ban or restrict the activities, said Bill Horn, legal counsel and federal affairs director for the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance.

Hunting rights

He said the bill is merely an attempt to protect the right of Americans to hunt and fish on public land, including wilderness areas, without constant legal challenges from animal rights and antihunting activists.

"Presently, the vast bulk of these lands are open," said Horn, who served as assistant secretary of the interior for fish, wildlife and parks in the Reagan administration and helped draft the legislation. "This would essentially maintain the status quo and provide a measure of legal protection. It does not tie the agencies' hands to restrict hunting, but it prevents the radical interests from getting in the way."

Conservationists said, however, that by implementing an "open unless closed" policy, the law would actually expose national parks, monuments, battlefields and historic sites - which generally have not been open for hunting - to the political whims of the U.S. Department of the Interior, which could potentially turn them into shooting ranges.

"I think they ought to call it the open season on national parks act," said Craig Obey, the senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group established in 1919 to look out for the interests of national parks. "This would be the most fundamentally damaging statutory change to the national parks in memory."

A 'Trojan horse'

Obey called the bill a "Trojan horse" that would go way beyond protecting rights and would instead change decades of legal precedent, opening up most of the 397 national park units to the possibility of gunplay and the killing of wildlife.

Hunting, trapping and recreational shooting are now prohibited in national parks, except in a few reserves, seashores and recreation areas where Congress has specifically authorized those activities.

The legislation, also known as the Sportsmen's Heritage Act of 2012, exempts national parks and monuments from being open to hunting, but Obey said it is worded in such a way that the interior secretary could presumably decide to allow hunting in those places if he wanted to. The law does not even mention historical and military parks or national memorials, Obey said.

The result, he said, is that "every national park site is at risk, from Yellowstone to Gettysburg to the Frederick Douglass House."

"There could be hunting dogs on the National Mall or in the wilderness of a national park. People could hunt ravens at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site," Obey said. "It's ridiculous, and nobody would ever propose that, but that's the kind of door that would be left open."

Gun control

Horn said the conservation association is misrepresenting the legislation, which he said affects only Forest Service and BLM land.

"I can tell you categorically that that nonsense about opening national parks is an utter red herring," Horn said. "The Park Service has very well established discretion under law that unless Congress expressly opened a unit to hunting, that unit remains closed to that activity. That body of law is not disturbed by this statute."

The Humane Society of the United States, the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Wilderness Society have joined the conservation association in an all-out effort to defeat the bill, but their track record on gun control on public forests is not good.

A law passed in 1997 declared hunting and fishing legitimate forms of recreation in national wildlife refuges, scotching some efforts to restrict or ban hunting, Horn said.

In 2008, the Bush administration struck down federal regulations banning loaded guns in most national forests, a move that was widely seen as a parting shot at incoming President Obama on behalf of the National Rifle Association. That ruling, which was opposed by the same groups, overturned a 25-year-old federal regulation severely restricting concealed firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges.

"At that time, they said it was just about concealed carry," Obey said. "Now, all of a sudden we're seeing the slippery slope has come to pass. We're looking at hunting and shooting and a whole host of activities in our parks that we know have been part of a long-term agenda for the NRA."

As it now stands, the proposed law would also prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from prohibiting the use of lead bullets, which have been implicated in the carrion poisoning deaths of endangered California condors.

"National parks were set aside to protect the wildlife that roam and historic sites that preserve our nation's history," Obey said, "not for using some of America's most valued treasures as target practice."