Bush Team Reversing Wilderness Act's 40-Year Success

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September 3, 2004 | Back Issues

 

Bush Team Reversing Wilderness Act's 40-Year Success

Forty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson enacted one of the most

forward-looking environmental laws in human history. By signing the 1964

Wilderness Act and creating the National Wilderness Preservation System,

President Johnson endorsed a uniquely American philosophy: America's wild lands,

untrammeled by industry or machinery -- yet open to the enjoyment of all

citizens -- possess special values that merit permanent protection for their own

sake.

 

The decision to preserve wild lands was without precedent anywhere in the world.

It symbolized Americans' deep pride in our greatest national asset -- our public

lands. The act also inspired an extended period of reflection among the nation's

historians, who saw the good in a people who collectively could act beyond the

immediate desires of the present and protect something for those who came after

them:

 

" In wilderness I sense the miracle of life, and behind it our scientific

accomplishments fade to trivia. " Charles A. Lindbergh, LIFE magazine, 22

December 1967

 

Since the law's signing, over 105 million acres of citizen-owned lands have been

protected as Wilderness Areas, from the towering summits of the Rocky Mountains,

to the pristine forests of the Pacific Northwest, to the biologically rich

swamps of Florida.

 

Another 200 million acres of federal public lands may be suitable for Wilderness

designation -- lands with equally stunning vistas, biological diversity and a

measure of the quiet and solitude that is rapidly disappearing as more private

lands become developed.

 

Sadly, with the arrival of the Bush Administration, the nation's remaining wild

lands are instead now targeted for development by the oil, gas, timber and

mining industries.

 

By definition, Wilderness Areas are off-limits to industrial use, and so have a

natural enemy in the extractive industries. When President Bush came to power in

2000, he stacked his cabinet and federal agencies with industry lobbyists who

spent their careers fighting the protection of wild lands.

 

Interior Secretary Gale Norton cut her teeth learning legal tricks from her

infamous predecessor and mentor, Reagan Interior Secretary James Watt -- a man

who actually advocated selling off our National Parks.

 

Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a life-long oil and gas man, headed a methane

company that is aggressively fighting wilderness designation in the Rockies.

Mark Rey, Undersecretary of Agriculture for Environment and Natural Resources,

made his living as a top lobbyist for the timber industry before gaining

oversight of the National Forest system.

 

This team of industry handmaidens quickly went to work dismantling the system

that allows for Wilderness preservation. The first major volley was an

under-cover-of-night decision by Secretary Norton to settle a controversial

lawsuit with then-Utah Governor Mike Leavitt (now chief of the Environmental

Protection Agency).

 

The " Norton-no-more-wilderness-settlement, " as it's called, established that the

U.S. Bureau of Land Management may not legally protect wilderness-quality lands

-- ever. Norton's goal is to open tens of millions of acres of roadless and wild

public lands throughout the West to oil and gas drilling.

 

Similarly, this summer, Undersecretary Rey killed the Clinton-era " Roadless Area

Conservation Rule, " which had allowed the Forest Service to inventory and

preserve wild forest lands while they await a decision from Congress over formal

Wilderness designation.

 

The roadless rule was the result of thousands of hours of public hearings. It

generated hundreds of thousands of comments in favor of its enactment -- the

most popular environmental decision of the last decade. Rey's reversal opened

millions of acres of the public's forests to timber cutting, mining, and oil and

gas drilling. Indeed, just last week, the Forest Service issued oil and gas

leases in an inventoried roadless area south of Jackson Hole, Wyoming -- Vice

President Cheney's home away from home.

 

While the wilderness characteristics President Bush aims to sacrifice are worthy

of preservation on their own merits, there is more at stake. Many cities in the

West increasingly rely on the clean water that flows from Wilderness Areas; some

of the cleanest water in the nation originates there.

 

Similarly, outdoor recreation, hunting, fishing and wildlife viewing are

multi-billion dollar industries that depend primarily on protected public lands.

These industries have spoken out against Bush's policies, but their pleas have

fallen on deaf ears.

 

Unless the President can be convinced to reverse course, these lands -- and the

legal basis of the American land ethic -- may be lost forever.

 

 

 

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