The week of July 14th, 2003, was a marathon of intense activity on Capitol Hill for the FY04 Interior Appropriations bill. At stake was a series of amendments to this important spending bill, all designed to head off damage to some of America's wildest National Parks, Forests, Wildlife Refuges and other protected places.
At the end of several long days and nights, while we didn't prevail on the amendments we supported, we achieved something quite remarkable all the same: We served loud notice that Americans care about their public lands and so does a large and bipartisan conservation contingent in the Congress. We also made clear that assaults on our public lands won't go unchallenged in Congress.
Unprecedented Agenda
The current Administration has made unprecedented attacks against the natural jewels under the care of all four public land agencies (National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Land Management, and the USDA Forest Service). Among them are elimination of protection for the wildest old-growth stands in our National Forests, a scheme to give states and counties the right to gouge roads into some of the wildest parts of our Parks, Refuges and Monuments, a plan to sacrifice winter's pristine hush to the piercing, smoky snarl of snowmobiles in Yellowstone, and defunding of critical land and wildlife protection efforts.
The agencies made some of these decisions in secret and with NO public participation at all. In making others, they ignored the clear, consistent public sentiment AGAINST them.
Last Resort
Faced with executive branch agencies that listen to polluters and private industry instead of to the public, a last resort is to deny them funds to implement their anti-conservation decisions or to otherwise encumber their actions via amendments to the funding measures. That was precisely what we sought to do last week during House consideration of the Interior Appropriations bill, which sets spending levels for our public lands management agencies.
None of our amendments passed, but that's only part of the story. We helped provide a remarkable show of strength from Americans who care about conservation and from members of Congress who honor that essential American tradition. Two amendments in particular tell that story:
Yellowstone Snowmobiles
The current National Park Service plan for snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park would actually increase pollution, noise and threats to wildlife and human visitors, rather than eliminate the use and protect America's first national park.
The appropriations amendment would have directed the Park Service to replace snowmobiles with snow coaches as it originally planned to do in response to a huge public outpouring. Reps. Rush Holt (D-NJ), Christopher Shays (R-CT), Nick Rahall (D-WV) and Timothy Johnson (R-IL) actually achieved a tie on this amendment, 210 to 210. At one point with seconds left in the allotted voting time, these conservationists were actually ahead in the voting 211-209, but House leaders kept the vote open until they pressured one unidentified Member into changing his or her vote from "Yes" to "No". Under House rules, a tie is the same as a loss; we had to win to succeed. So that one last-minute flip-flop made all the difference.
>> How they voted on the Holt/Shays/Rahall/Johnson snowmobile amendment
>> More on Yellowstone snowmobiles
Roads to Ruin/RS 2477
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has revived a law repealed by Congress 27 years ago to allow special interests and local jurisdictions to claim thousands of miles of rights-of-way, including cow paths and stream bottoms, across unroaded federal lands. Such action will promote private development of our public lands and disqualify once wild places from future wilderness protection.
Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) sponsored an amendment to bring this giveaway to a grinding halt. The Udall amendment gained such strong bipartisan support that the opposition admitted defeat a couple of days before the vote and offered their own amendment, sponsored by Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC). Although the Taylor amendment (which eventually passed) would protect only one-third of public lands, leaving most of Utah's Red Rock wilderness and other special places at risk, the fact that they felt compelled to offer it at all clearly demonstrated that even anti-wilderness Members of Congress understood that the Administration's proposal had gone too far.
>> How they voted on the Udall RS 2477 amendment
>> More on RS 2477
Roadless Area Conservation Rule
58 million acres of the most pristine, untouched landscapes on our national forests have been specially protected since 1996 by the so-called "Roadless Rule," which prohibits logging and road building in these unspoiled stands of trees. The Administration has now announced it will reopen Alaska's virgin forests to logging, excluding from protection roadless areas in our two largest national forests, the Tongass and Chugach in Alaska. Further, it has offered western governors the opportunity to reject Roadless Rule protections for our national forests in their states.
An amendment offered by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) would have prevented the Forest Service from spending any money to implement its plan. After an impassioned debate, the amendment failed by a vote of 234 to 185.
>> How they voted on the roadless amendment
>> More on Roadless Areas
Conservation Trust Fund
Over the past 40 years, key conservation programs like the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) have provided the money to protect wildlife, provide hiking and other outdoor recreation opportunities across the country, and to preserve such crown jewels as Everglades National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and the Appalachian Trail. Just three years ago, in 2000, Congress created a new funding mechanism called the Conservation Trust Fund to make sure that America would always reserve enough money to continue to address its most pressing conservation, wildlife and recreation needs.
The Appropriations Committee proposed this year to slash the trust fund, by over $500 million. Cuts of that magnitude would constrain the ability of states and communities to protect valuable wildlife habitat and open space in your backyard. They would make it very difficult for the federal, state and local governments to buy and protect land in and around parks, forests, historic sites and archaeological treasures, from the wild coasts of Maine to Yosemite National Park.
The amendment, offered by Rep. David Obey (D-WI), sought to restore the Conservation Trust Fund to its promised level of $1.56 billion, adding $570 million for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, Forest Legacy and other priority conservation, wildlife, and recreation activities. Unfortunately, it never got a fair vote; it was kept from the floor on a technicality by a vote of 199-219.
>> How they voted (this issue was considered as part of a broader vote, i.e., not a stand-alone vote on the Obey amendment)
>> More on the Conservation Trust Fund
Protecting Wild Buffalo in Yellowstone National Park
Last winter, the National Park Service captured 231 Yellowstone buffalo and sent them to slaughter. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), sought to force the NPS and the Forest Service to stop killing this American icon, which survives at all in large part because a mere 25 remained within the park's borders at the turn of the last century. The amendment would require the agencies to consider other, nonlethal management tools to resolve the alleged conflict between buffalo and cattle on federal public lands adjacent to Yellowstone.
The amendment failed by a vote of 220 to 199.
>> How they voted on the buffalo amendment
Protection of Fish and Wildlife in the Klamath Basin
Last fall, 33,000 salmon died in the Klamath River because too much water was diverted out of the river and associated wetlands in order to irrigate crops in the arid Klamath Basin of Oregon and California. Part of the problem is the vast amount of land within the region's National Wildlife Refuges that is commercially farmed. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has scrapped earlier plans to both save water and reduce pesticide poisoning on these wildlife refuges. This reversal will result in significant harm to the environment and to the fish and wildlife that our refuges are set aside to protect.
The amendment sponsored by Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Mike Thompson (D-CA), and Christopher Shays (R-CT), would have prohibited crops on the refuges that use especially large quantities of water, that require particularly toxic pesticides, and that provide no benefit to wildlife.
The amendment failed by a vote of 228 to 197.
>> How they voted on the Klamath amendment
>> More on the Klamath Basin
Upholding Sound Forest Management
Often the only thing that stands between the most beautiful and wild places in our National Forests and a commercial logging company's chainsaw is people like you making their voices heard through the process set up by the National Forest Management Act, or NFMA, and the Forest Service's own regulations. But the Administration is seeking to re-work large portions of forest law to greatly reduce public participation, scientific input and objective analysis of environmental impacts in management of our national forests. If successful, this rollback will degrade forests and harm wildlife across our nation, and squelch private citizens' ability to influence plans for forests in their own backyards.
The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Tom Udall (D-NM), would have prevented the Forest Service from spending any money to gut the existing forest protections provided by the National Forest Management Act. It failed by a vote of 198 to 222.
>> How they voted on the forest management amendment
>> More on National Forest management
On to the Senate
The fight now moves to the U.S. Senate, which will take up its version of the appropriations measure after the August recess. We will keep you informed on what happens there and how you can help.
