WASHINGTON -- For the second time this year, the Senate has passed a long-delayed bill to set aside more than 2 million acres in nine states as protected wilderness, from a California mountain range to a forest in Virginia.

The bill also would let Alaska go forward with plans to build an airport access road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge as part of a land swap that would transfer more than 61,000 acres to the federal government, much of it designated as wilderness.

Critics have called the project a "road to nowhere." Backers say the road is needed for residents of a remote village on the Bering Sea who now use a hovercraft to reach an airport and hospital.

The 77-20 vote on Thursday sends the bill to the House, where final legislative approval could come as early as next week. Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Mark Begich, a Democrat, both voted for the bill.

The Senate first approved the measure in January, but the House rejected it last week amid a partisan dispute over gun rights. The gun issue was not raised during Senate debate.

The legislation -- a package of nearly 170 separate bills -- would confer the government's highest level of protection on land ranging from California's Sierra Nevada mountain range and Oregon's Mount Hood to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and parts of the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.

Supporters called the legislation among the most important conservation bills debated in Congress in decades.

"The Senate shows great vision in making this bill a priority," said Paul Spitler of The Wilderness Society. "These wonderful landscapes are under tremendous pressure, and their value to local communities and to all Americans who treasure our natural heritage will remain long after the country has recovered from the economic crisis."

Lawmakers from both parties praised the bill as a hard-fought compromise.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has battled Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., for months over the lands bill, said he was pleased the Senate was finally able to pass it on a bipartisan basis. Reid called the bill important to his home state, Nevada, and to the nation.

Coburn held up the bill's passage last year and again this year, arguing that it was unnecessary and would block energy development on millions of acres of federal land. The bill moved forward this week after Coburn was allowed to submit six amendments for approval. Five were defeated.

A sixth amendment, softening a provision to impose criminal penalties for collecting some fossilized rocks on federal land, was approved.