[RC] Bush Administration Policy on Wilderness - Linda B. Merims
Just to remind everybody, Wilderness, with a
capital "W,"
is a formal legal designation. Only
Congress can make
land Wilderness. Because of the
disgruntlement with
the way the existing designated Wilderness has
been
managed (not the disgruntlement of
recreationists, really,
we don't count for that much, but the disgruntlement of
commercial interests), there hasn't been the votes in
Congress to create any new Wilderness in many years.
The Clinton administration was trying to gain a similar
effect by designating land as potential Wilderness.
(They were also very into designating National Monuments,
but that's a
different legal designation with different
implications, but which created similar
problems
for horse people.)
Anyway...see below. I, personally, have
mixed feelings
about this.
2) THE END OF
WILDERNESS New York Times, Editorial/Op-Ed, May 4, 2003
>From the
beginning, President Bush has been far more interested in exploiting the
public lands for commercial purposes than in protecting their environmental
values. On matters ranging from snowmobiles in Yellowstone to roadless
areas in the national forests, his administration has tried steadily to chip
away at safeguards put in place by the Clinton administration - largely in an
effort to help the oil, gas, timber and mining industries, and often in
cavalier disregard for environmental reviews mandated by law. Now comes
another devastating blow: The revelation that his Department of the Interior
is no longer interested in recommending any of the millions of acres under
its jurisdiction for permanent wilderness protection.
The new policy
has still not caused much of a stir. Like most of the bad environmental
news emanating from this administration, it emerged from the shadows late on
a Friday evening. There was no formal announcement - just a few letters
to interested senators from Gale Norton describing a legal settlement she had
reached earlier that day with the state of Utah. But a close reading of
that deal showed it to be a blockbuster - a fundamental reinterpretation of
environmental law, and a reversal of four decades of federal wilderness
policy.
At issue in the settlement were 2.6 million acres of federal land
in Utah that were inventoried by former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
and designated as de facto wilderness - that is, land deserving of
protection from commercial activity until such time as Congress, which has
sole power to designate permanent wilderness, can decide whether to add it to
the nation's 107 million wilderness acres. Mr. Babbitt's actions
infuriated Utah, which had commercial designs on the land. But the
state's efforts to stop Mr. Babbitt in court failed.
About six weeks
ago, however, Utah quietly filed an amended complaint, to which the
administration quickly acceded. Under the settlement, Ms. Norton not
only agreed to withdraw the 2.6 million acres from wilderness consideration
but also renounced the department's authority to conduct wilderness reviews
anywhere in the country. In one stroke, Ms. Norton yanked more than 250
million acres off the table. Not all of those acres, of course, are
worthy of permanent wilderness protection. But under the new policy
settlement, those that are will no longer be placed in the pipeline for
Congressional consideration. Ms. Norton's associates rushed to
assure critics that they be will mindful of "wilderness" values in the lands
they manage. But the days when interior secretaries aggressively pushed
Congress to add to the federal domain are clearly over.
Ms. Norton
insists that she is right to rescind the Babbitt designation - and that Mr.
Babbitt was wrong to make it in the first place - because the government's
authority to identify and manage potential wilderness under the 1976 Federal
Land Policy and Management Act has long since expired. That is an
extraordinarily cramped interpretation of the law. One key part of
the act did in fact expire. But other provisions conferring upon the
secretary the right to provide interim wilderness protections remain very
much alive, and these are the ones Mr. Babbitt properly invoked.
There
is no doubt that the law gives the secretary of the interior the right to
identify potential wilderness areas and manage them accordingly.
The only question is whether he or she wants to use that authority. And
Ms. Norton, to our great dismay, clearly does
not.
