Another Interior Department official is
under investigation for a conflict of interest: This time
it’s the department’s top lawyer, William Myers (HCN,
6/23/03). Watchdog groups say Myers, who represented public-lands
ranching associations as a Boise lawyer and signed a recusal
agreement after his appointment as solicitor, met with cattle
interests seven times to discuss changes to federal grazing
regulations. Last November, Myers told the Nevada Cattlemen’s
Association that “you can hardly dig a post hole without
having to do an environmental analysis.”
As Utah prepares to petition the federal
government to hand over thousands of old roads across
public lands, officials in Kane County have launched their own
first strike. County Commissioner Mark Habbeshaw and Sheriff Lamont
Smith plucked 31 BLM signs prohibiting ATV and motorcycle use on
roads in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. They
delivered the signs to monument headquarters with a letter saying
BLM restrictions on other roads “are obstructing public
access upon county roads” (HCN, 2/3/03: Road warriors back on
the offensive).
It might not exactly be
a love-in, but it’s good for the land. In New
Mexico, the pro-property rights Paragon Foundation — which
has frequently defended ranchers against environmentalists’
lawsuits — is teaming up with wilderness advocates to save
Otero Mesa (HCN, 9/10/01: Gas industry gambles on New Mexico mesa).
With oil and gas companies salivating for a crack at the
mesa’s hidden treasures, the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
is pushing to protect over a half-million acres on the mesa as
wilderness.
And just when it looked like
California’s quest to mandate zero-emission
vehicles might get zeroed out, compromise has saved the
day … more or less. A 1990 law required that about 100,000
cars sold in the state this year be nonpolluting, but three big
automakers — and the Bush administration — challenged
the law. An August settlement between the automakers and the state
now calls for 250 hydrogen fuel cell cars on California’s
roads by 2008, as well as 120,000 hybrids and 2 million
“low-emission” vehicles by 2009.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Follow-up.
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