Dear HCN,
Ed Marston believes that
a reborn Department of Interior under Bruce Babbitt has led America
out of the darkness of greedy natural resource extraction interests
and into the warm sunlight of enlightened environmentalism (HCN,
1/15/01: Bush administration faces a reborn
Interior).
I am not so sure.
Clinton-Babbitt forced their own personal value system onto the
rest of us in the West, often with the sensitivity of a crowbar
tongue depressor. Those values catered to special environmental
interest groups; undermined science-based management of federal
lands; developed plans and action programs without any regard to
state and local governments; and undermined the people’s confidence
in the integrity and professionalism of government
agencies.
I do not expect the Bush-Norton team to
roll back environmental laws and cater exclusively to natural
resource extraction interests. I do expect they will provide a wide
range of goods, services and uses from the public lands while
maintaining the ecological health and integrity of those
lands.
Marston’s willingness to place all of his
faith in a government bureaucracy instead of the values and beliefs
of many Western interests does not convince me that he is ready to
embrace the change in public-land management that is about to
occur. I suspect he is still desperately holding onto the
government-knows-best philosophy of the Babbitt era. I believe that
era ended with the exit of Clinton-Babbitt out the back door of the
White House.
Jim
Gerber
St. Anthony, Idaho
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Babbitt didn’t know best.
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