step toward balancing America's need to shift to clean energy with the need to protect unique and sensitive lands." Furthermore, "global warming represents an unprecedented threat to the survival of ecosystems and wildlife, including publicly owned resources, and the human communities that depend on those resources." However, it believes that Title II "would legislate matters that should be left to the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior, given the fact that renewables development on the public lands is in its infancy." Given the unprecedented scale of some of the proposed solar projects, "we really cannot know what the full range of impacts might be." Johanna Wald, attorney for the NRDC, testified that "BLM and other federal agency staff have ... little to no expertise in renewables development on the lands under their jurisdiction." However, "they will learn a great deal from permitting the fast-track projects – that is, those projects that are potentially eligible for approval by December 2010." Thus, federal agency staff should be given adequate time to learn from experience. "The bill seeks to legislate ambitious and ill-conceived deadlines for BLM review of permit applications, placing a heavy resource burden on the agency, while also jeopardizing the quality of its environmental reviews. Rather than locking in deadlines for these critically important reviews, we believe that the Secretary of the Interior should be required to establish appropriate deadlines and to report to Congress on the effectiveness of those deadlines once established." The Sierra Club calls the bill "an important first step towards achieving balance between the protection of public lands and wildlife in the desert and the pressing need for renewable energy development to address the challenge of climate change" and "strongly supports the wilderness designations, wild and scenic rivers designations and National Park expansions". However, it "strongly opposes the designation of the proposed OHV Recreation Areas", fearing that "this provision will set a dangerous precedent, which will significantly increase the pressure from OHV groups for such designations in any new public lands bills, not just in California but nationwide." Furthermore, "the Sierra Club would like to see the bill's tight deadlines for reviewing renewable energy projects relaxed." Off-road vehicular recreation The only representative to testify against the bill at the May 20 Senate Committee hearing was Harry Baker of the California Association of 4WD Clubs. Despite language in the bill permitting all existing uses of the land