Buck In Brief

Congress Goes After the Public's Lands

In Brief: A series of riders -- adopted with little debate or public involvement -- strips many protections from lands manged by the Interior and Agriculture departments.

11/15/03

Most Americans give little thought to the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service, but these federal agencies have a huge impact on our daily lives and our environment. Unfortunately, the current administration and Congress are doing their best to keep us from having any impact on them.

The Interior Department is composed of eight Bureaus: Land Management; Minerals Management; Indian Affairs; Reclamation; the U.S. Geological Survey; the National Park Service; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and the Office of Surface Mining. One out of every five acres of land in the United States is under its control. It provides the resources for nearly one third of the nation's energy (including 68 percent of the oil and gas reserves in the U.S.) and water to 31 million citizens through 900 dams and reservoirs. Sixty percent of America's vegetables are grown with water provided by the Department of the Interior.

The Forest Service manages 155 national forests encompassing 191 million acres (about the size of Texas) and 20 national grasslands. It is the largest forestry research organization in the world and also provides technical and financial assistance to state and private forestry agencies. The Forest Service's website accurately notes that "[t]he natural resources on these lands are some of the Nation's greatest assets and have major economic, environmental, and social significance for all Americans."

Following a joint House-Senate Conference, the U. S. House of Representatives and the Senate have passed the 2004 Appropriations bill for the Interior Department and the Forest Service. The provisions of this bill, due to the size and importance of these agencies, are always of great concern to Earthjustice. This year, to our (not unexpected) alarm, the Bush administration has saddled the Appropriations bill with several anti-environmental riders. Here are four areas where this bill will cause significant and perhaps irreparable harm.

National Parks, Wilderness Areas, Wildlife Refuges, & Monuments

The final version of the House bill contained language fought for by Earthjustice's Policy and Legislative team that would have protected National Parks, National Monuments, National Wildlife Refuges, and Wilderness Study Areas from bogus R.S. 2477 right-of-way-claims. The Bush administration has been attempting to revive this 137 year-old law in order to give states and counties the right to turn cow paths, hiking trails, and streambeds into thousands of miles of highways across public lands. Unfortunately, this measure was not included in the bill that came out of the House-Senate Conference. The result: a huge sop to pro-development interests, who will be able to use this loophole to bulldoze new roads through some of our most cherished and pristine places.

Grazing on Public Lands

A measure tacked on to the Appropriations bill caters to another private interest -- the cattle industry. It mandates the renewal of grazing permits that expire over the next five years without the required environmental reviews and public input. This egregious handout -- the cattle industry pays only a token amount to graze on public lands -- is also an environmental disaster that threatens wildlife, pollutes streams, and ruins forests and grasslands.

Alaska

Once again, the Bush administration has taken aim at the Tongass, the largest forest in the National Forest System and the largest expanse of temperate rainforest in the U.S. The Tongass rider in the Interior Appropriations bill sets a 30-day deadline for filing legal challenges to approximately 40 timber sales on the Tongass. This greatly reduces the ability of citizens to file effective legal challenges against harmful old-growth timber sales in the Tongass and interferes with the independence of the federal judiciary by forcing the Alaska District Federal Court to review lawsuits regarding these sales within 180 days. Our Juneau office is already working closely with citizen groups, tourism businesses, and others to protect Tongass wild lands from these logging projects.

Alaska's Bristol Bay has also been targeted. Congress has maintained a moratorium on drilling in these pristine coastal waters for the past 14 years to protect the bay's seabird rookeries, marine mammal concentrations and salmon fishery. The bill eliminates that moratorium, clearing the way for offshore drilling in the Bay.

Kootenai National Forest

Another anti-environmental forest rider added to the Interior Bill by Senator Conrad Burns' (R-MT) interferes with the judicial review of logging projects in Montana's Kootenai National Forest, an area that includes occupied grizzly bear habitat and stands of old growth forest. This rider also seeks to waive important pollution protections of the Clean Water Act, guts the National Environmental Policy Act, and impedes public involvement in logging projects within the extensive North Fork drainage of Montana's Flathead National Forest for the next five years.

There are no silver linings in any of these pieces of legislation. They are, perhaps, a backhanded complement to Earthjustice's success in the courts and to judicial independence -- each of them is a response to cases we have won or are perceived as likely to bring. We can only say that they will not deter us from using every law we can to protect the resources at stake and will continue to work with other environmental groups to publicize what Congress and the administration are doing and minimize their chances of future success.

Vawter "Buck" Parker, Executive Director
buckparker@earthjustice.org