Dear HCN,
High-powered
environmentalists, stealthily working behind the scenes, have
persuaded President Clinton to support a $65 million land exchange
that will rescue Yellowstone National Park from the proposed New
World Mine (HCN, 9/2/96).
I wish I could be
pleased by this news, but I am not.
Like many
Americans, I consider the mining proposal for that site a dubious
adventure that would benefit Crown Butte’s stockholders at an
unacceptable risk to a national treasure. Some developments simply
ought not be permitted, and should this one pass regulatory muster,
I would favor buying out Crown Butte’s rights, employing the power
of eminent domain if necessary. Surely, in a trillion-dollar-plus
federal budget, money for a buy-out can be
found.
But would I favor a land swap? No. Not
again. Land swaps fall on the wrong side of environmental justice
issues. Several years ago, as the chair of the Sierra Club in
Montana (I’m no longer a member), I defended another land exchange
in the Yellowstone area, believing it to be the best solution to
the vexing problem of consolidating high-quality wildlife habitat
adjacent to the park. That land swap unquestionably was to the
benefit of the Greater Yellowstone natural region, but I am not
convinced that it resulted in a net environmental gain for the
nation.
Development merely was displaced to other
regions. The partisans of Yellowstone protected their backyard by
exporting environmental degradation.
The twofold
rationale for that swap, which will be the rationale for the Crown
Butte swap, was that (a) the Yellowstone region’s lands were more
valuable than the lands to which development was displaced, and (b)
a swap was the only mechanism available, for politicians
obstinately oppose appropriating money for large-scale buyouts.
There was just enough truth in those arguments to wrap the land
exchange in the robes of noble purpose, and to push it through
Congress over the objections of what appeared to be a shrill
minority.
In retrospect, I wish I had withheld my
blessing. The ink had scarcely dried on the paperwork before the
chainsaws roared and trees hundreds of miles away from Yellowstone
began crashing to the ground. Yellowstone’s gain was the nation’s
loss elsewhere, and the righteous arguments advanced by the
advocates of Yellowstone rang hollow indeed. The good intentions of
the swap’s supporters notwithstanding, that deal represented the
triumph of arrogance and selfishness, not practical nobility or
responsible conservation.
Thinking locally, but
acting globally, is a dangerous approach to conservation, and there
is no better example of this than the proposed Crown Butte land
exchange. Most likely, that swap will be a zero-sum game, improving
the environs of the park by sanctioning environmental degradation
elsewhere. That is neither a just nor a responsible policy, and we
ought not to adopt it.
James
R. Conner
Kalispell,
Montana
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Yellowstone land swap stinks.
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