One of our nation’s more dubious
political practices is the tendency to cloak questionable —
even harmful — environmental policies in the rhetoric of
conservation. Consider the debatable environmental merits of the
current administration’s “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forest”
initiatives, two policies that many argue weaken existing
protections for air, water and forests.
This month, the
Bush administration let loose its biggest environmental whopper
yet. In announcing the new “Roadless Area Conservation” policy, the
administration removed 58.5 million acres of publicly owned forest
from federal protections against the road building and
timber-cutting practices that have ecologically unraveled so many
of our public lands.
“Our actions today advance the Bush
administration’s commitment to cooperatively conserving roadless
areas,” Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said in announcing the
plan, which calls for greater state oversight of these lands.
This clever use of euphemism to describe policies harmful
to air, water and land represents a calculated strategy to polarize
the environment as an issue among voters. As always, most Americans
are busy trying to make ends meet, and now, along with the economy,
their concerns center on national security and terrorism, far more
so than on nature. For the past 20 years, poll after poll has
depicted voters as sympathetic to environmental issues, but today,
when asked to discern the truth between the Bush
administration’s environmental doublespeak and the often
hyperbolic response of environmental groups, most people throw up
their hands in confusion. Then they tune out.
Yet, for a
large constituency whose interests it claims to safeguard, this
administration may now have gone too far. More than 55 million
Americans hunt and fish. As a constituency, hunters and anglers are
not prone to proclaim that the sky is falling every time the
administration launches another policy initiative. Hunters and
anglers are more likely to view state and federal agencies as
partners than as adversaries. Working together with agency
managers, such groups as Trout Unlimited donate hundreds of
thousands of hours of volunteer labor to clean up streams and
repair degraded watersheds on public lands across America.
Hunters and anglers do so in part because they know that
the opportunity to enjoy our nation’s shared outdoors is
constantly threatened. Every day in the United States, more than
8,700 acres of forest, field, wetlands and open space are lost to
development and urbanization. When you consider that more and more
private land is posted off limits to hunting and fishing, you begin
to see why hunters and anglers think the protection of wildlife and
fish habitat on public lands is so important.
Hunters and
anglers also know that the last, best wildlife and fish habitat on
the public lands is in our national forests’ roadless areas,
but as a result of the administration’s recent action, these
areas are vulnerable to development. Consider the fish and wildlife
values of roadless areas in Idaho, the backdrop for the
announcement of the new roadless policy. Idaho’s roadless
areas:
- Comprise 75 percent of the
remaining habitat for endangered Chinook salmon and steelhead; - Harbor nearly 60 percent of the remaining
habitat for the Idaho state fish, the westslope cutthroat trout; - Yield the largest animals and provide the
longest hunting seasons for deer and elk.
Even as Secretary Veneman pledged her commitment to “maintain the
undeveloped character of the most pristine areas of the National
Forest System,” plans are proceeding for roadless-area timber sales
in Alaska and Oregon, including the largest timber sale in Forest
Service history in southern Oregon. New roads are planned in
roadless areas for oil and gas development in Colorado and Wyoming.
For too long, both political parties have either ignored
or taken for granted the interests of the millions of Americans who
hunt and fish. No amount of double-talk, however, can mask the
vital importance of roadless areas to fish, wildlife and water
resources, and even the cleverest use of euphemism cannot disguise
the truth about the Bush administration’s actions regarding
roadless area “conservation.” Actions speak louder than words.
Chris Wood is a contributor to Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado (hcn.org). He was a policy advisor to Forest Service Chief
Mike Dombeck during the Clinton administration; he is now vice
president for conservation at Trout Unlimited in Arlington,
Virginia.
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