Dear HCN,
Some Westerners seem to
believe that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is the only one who
ever moved, under presidential direction, to encourage the
preservation of land and water under national monument
designation.
America has had 48 secretaries of
the Interior. Since the passage by Congress in 1906 of the act that
allows presidents to set aside and protect national monuments, we
have had 24 Secretaries.
Almost without
exception, they encouraged the presidents they served to protect
land and water under that act – the Antiquities Act of 1906. Every
president since Theodore Roosevelt (excepting only Nixon, Reagan
and Bush) has used the act to preserve critical national areas by
declaring them national monuments.
Teddy
Roosevelt protected more than a dozen areas. So did Woodrow Wilson,
Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge. President Franklin Roosevelt
protected more than two dozen, setting aside nearly 2 million
acres. President Carter gave lasting protection to the most public
land – 56 million acres in 17 national monuments in Alaska in
1978.
In the tradition of those nearly one
hundred years, Babbitt is engaged in a public conversation with us
Westerners. It is a patient dialogue that is far greater than any
of his predecessors ever conducted and he is doing it in an effort
to give full public voice and participation to the matter of
further protecting “objects of historic and scientific interest” as
the Antiquities Act requires.
Some of the voices,
particularly those of our more moderate and thoughtful cattle
folks, should be listened to. Too many others, however are shrill
and rude. We recognize that crowd – deep voices and shallow logic –
big hats and no cattle. These are people who demand to continue
using the public’s land for their own greedy personal benefit.
Those are the same voices which have resisted national monument
protections for the last 94 years. They resisted other secretaries
of the Interior and other presidents – both Democrats and
Republicans – when this identical designation was used to save
priceless treasures: the Grand Canyon, Devils Tower, Glacier Bay in
Alaska, Bryce Canyon, Death Valley and California’s beloved Muir
Woods! Montana’s wild Missouri is in that class! So are other
proposed areas, such as the Anasazi Indian ruins in Colorado and
the Shivwits Plateau in Utah.
No, Bruce Babbitt
isn’t the first, and hopefully, he won’t be the last Interior
secretary with the wisdom to propose what is right, the courage to
make it happen, and the guts to give a
damn!
Pat
Williams
Missoula,
Montana
The writer is a former congressman from Montana, and a contributor to HCN’s Writers on the Range.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Interior secretaries have what it takes.
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