President Bush on Thursday signed into law a bill to establish the first new wilderness area in Washington state since 1984.

The House gave final approval to the Wild Sky Wilderness bill last month. It designates 167 square miles in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest north of Seattle as federal wilderness, the government’s highest level of protection.

Wild Sky, first introduced in 2002, covers approximately 106,000 acres of low-elevation forest on the west slope of the Cascades. The wilderness designation will block development and other economic activity in a sprawling area north of U.S. Highway 2 that includes habitat for bears, bald eagles and other wildlife, as well as streams, hiking trails and other recreation.

The bill signed on Thursday also designates a site on Bainbridge Island, where hundreds of Japanese-Americans were forced from their homes on the way to internment camps during World War II as a national historic site.

(AP)