Norton replaces Babbitt

It’s out with the old and in with the new as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney prepare to take over the White House. Some have suggested the transition might better be described as in with the old and out with the new, given that Bush has brought back a few of his father’s advisers to help him govern, and given that many believe Bill Clinton and Al Gore are more progressive thinkers than Bush and Cheney.

Environmental activists, for example, were quick to denounce the Bush-Cheney team as consisting mostly of re-runs and re-treads from the 1970s and 1980s. They groaned when Bush named several fellow oil men to sensitive cabinet positions, and they gasped in horror when he named a “wise use” advocate to head up the Department of Interior. Even Canada’s Gallon Environment Letter expressed dismay that Gale Norton had been nominated to one of the most important posts in the United States for protecting the environment. “The Ralph Nader-Assisted President-Elect, George W. Bush, has begun to show his brown colours,” the newsletter stated, after denouncing “wise use” as “an anti-environmental movement designed to rally ranchers, oilmen, loggers and miners in an effort to open up government lands for their own special exploitations.”

The rhetoric isn’t surprising, given that environmental groups have long viewed the Department of the Interior as the nation’s conservation agency. Bruce Babbitt, the outgoing secretary of the Interior, tacitly supported the notion that his main role was to protect as much land as possible from human activities. He never hesitated to portray miners as villainous pillagers of Mother Earth. Nor did he hesitate to use whatever means were at his disposal to thwart mine development proposals. This won him high praise from environmentalists, to be sure, but it also generated plenty of lawsuits from companies, individuals and organizations who felt his actions were heavy-handed and, in some cases, unconstitutional.

The reality is that the Department of the Interior is responsible for much more than conservation. In addition to the National Park Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, it oversees numerous federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the Minerals Management Service, the Office of Surface Mining, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the U.S. Geological Survey. This means the department has responsibilities governing various human activities on ground owned by the federal government, which amounts to a full third of the nation’s land mass. Indeed, it’s safe to say that the department is responsible for “wise use” of public lands.

Unfortunately, the notion of “wise use” has fallen out of favour with environmental groups, who instead champion “no use” of public lands. “Keep it wild” is the new rallying cry, which means separating humans from nature as much as possible and wherever possible. As might be expected, conflicts between groups supporting “wise use” and those supporting “no use” have escalated in recent years.

Throughout her career, Norton has advocated a balanced approach to land-use. She’s a fighter too, and has worked for organizations that have lawsuits pending against the Clinton administration for its unilateral withdrawals of public lands. Among these is the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which has a suit pending against President Clinton for his use of the federal Antiquities Act to create numerous national monuments throughout the American West. The foundation argues that Clinton “boldly ignored the desires of westerners, as well as the clear restrictions of the Constitution” in order to create a “federal lands legacy” before leaving public office.

Last June, for example, Babbitt urged Clinton to create four new monuments; Clinton complied, expanding to 3.7 million acres the amount of land he has set aside for that purpose. These unilateral actions have been bitterly opposed by local residents in most cases — none more so than in the Utah, where, in the fall of 1996, Clinton decreed that 1.7 million acres be set aside as de facto wilderness rather than be managed under multiple-use mandates, as is required by Congress. In the process, he stopped development of a coal mine that would have employed 1,000 citizens and contributed more than US$20 million annually to the local economy. The people of Utah were outraged by these actions and, as might be expected, filed several lawsuits in protest.

All of this is not to say that some public lands shouldn’t be set aside for parks and wilderness preserves. The point is that the methods used by Babbitt and the Clinton-Gore administration have been flawed, heavy-handed and needlessly divisive. If reconciliation is to become the hallmark of the Bush administration, then rural residents and other local stakeholders must be given a voice in the decision-making process that determines land use.

Unlike Bruce Babbitt, Gale Norton understands that there are plenty of broken fences to mend in the American West. Literally, as well as figuratively.