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Federal Policies Threaten America's Natural Heritage
My son’s first steps were taken warily on the red slickrock in Utah’s wild canyon country. Luke explored tenuously. He stumbled and played. He showed his parents lizards and red dirt. He learned you can’t dig in rock.
Luke didn’t know it then, but he was part of a great American tradition – family camping in the wilderness. Unfortunately it’s a tradition his children may not be able to continue because of the Bush administration’s policies on America’s public lands. Much of the redrock country where Luke first walked has had its wilderness protections eliminated and is now slated for oil and gas leasing. The policy was abruptly pronounced early in 2001 with a memo to employees of the Bureau of Land Management in Utah informing them that whenever an oil and gas proposal crossed their desk it was to become their first priority.
Utah is not unique. Ranchers across the west are finding their livelihoods threatened by the Bush administration’s rush towards massive oil and gas developments. The consequent roads, wellheads, and sludge ponds are a disaster for cows as well as wild animals. The air is fouled and the water is poisoned.
In Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin the administration is opening up 147,000 acres of our National Forests to road construction in order to get the timber cut out – a taxpayer funded subsidy for timber industry profits.
It’s not like all this destruction is benefiting the American economy to any significant degree. The contribution to our oil supply from drilling the remaining wild portions of our public lands in the lower 48 states is measured in days and weeks -- the damage lasts forever. The economic benefits gained from American families who hunt, hike, camp, and fish on these lands is also gone forever once they’ve been drilled. Who wants to travel to camp near a sludge pond or a wellhead?
America’s most beautiful places are being left vulnerable. The Bush administration is leasing land for oil and gas development on the boundaries of Dinosaur National Monument and Arches National Park. It has gone out of its way to enable county governments to construct highways in national parks, monuments and wilderness areas. Following the administration’s lead, San Juan County in Utah is claiming Salt Creek in Canyonlands National Park as a county highway. Other western counties have thousands of similar claims waiting to be filed.
My family has often returned to Utah’s spectacular redrock wilderness. On one of those trips we walked with two others, more experienced with cross-country hiking, to help complete a citizens’ inventory of lands potentially eligible for wilderness designation. Luke, still loving the red rock and dirt, developed a painful fascination with cactus. His younger brother Sam rode in a carrier on my back. My wife Lisa pulled the needles from Luke’s arm. The land we and others helped survey made it onto a map later incorporated into a federal wilderness study area. The Bush administration has removed those protections via closed door negotiations. My future grandchildren have been betrayed by a deceitful, backdoor political deal.
There is, of course, a better way. We can preserve the remaining wild portions of God’s creation. All it takes is for the government to maintain the National Parks and wilderness preserves which the American people, in their wisdom, have set aside in order to protect our natural heritage. Listening to the people would be a good first step for the administration to take.
As the song says, this land is your land from Utah’s redrock canyons to the Great Lakes of the Midwest. America’s public lands are owned by all of the nation’s citizens. The law allows for any or all of us to participate in the policy making decisions that govern our land. If we would keep the process open, and not shut the people out via closed-door deals or executive fiats, the American people would make wise decisions. The Bush administration needs to remember that the words of the Declaration of Independence which said “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed” apply also to America’s public lands.
Op. Ed. -- The Northern Express, October 28, 2004
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