[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 65 (Monday, May 23, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                          THE WAR IN THE WEST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, the gentleman from Wyoming [Mr. Thomas] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. THOMAS of Wyoming. Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk for a few moments 
about the war on the West. I come from Wyoming, one of the States that 
is a public land State. In our State about 50 percent of the land 
belongs to the Federal Government and is managed by the Bureau of Land 
Management.
  I am not talking about national parks, I am not talking about forest 
reserves, I am talking about those lands that were residual lands that 
were left after the homesteaders took up homesteads and have been since 
managed by the Federal Government, unlike the rest of the States, 
unlike the States east of the Mississippi River, indeed east of the 
Missouri River.
  So I am talking about a war on the West, a war on the West that has 
been particularly intense for the last year and a half with the 
administration and Secretary Babbitt particularly being the point man.

                              {time}  1040

  I think it has been interesting and particularly callous in the last 
several months in the administration, and both Democrats nationally and 
locally to sort of dismiss the idea that there was indeed a war on the 
West, sort of a callous dismissal of the legitimate interests and 
concerns of the people who live in these lands.
  Let me talk a bit about what folks in my State believe to be the 
values and the future of the West.
  One has to do with hunting and recreation. Probably the most popular 
thing among Wyoming residents and those who visit Wyoming is the 
opportunity to hunt and to fish. Of course, it is the multiple-use idea 
that these lands may be used for a number of things. So, in addition to 
the recreational values and recreation need, there needs to be an 
opportunity for jobs. When 50 percent of your State belongs to the 
Federal Government, then the multiple-use idea, the idea that you can 
hunt and fish and recreate as well as raise cattle and drill for oil 
and gas and trona and coal needs to be compatible and needs to work 
together. Otherwise, you have no economic future to plan on.
  So I think it is particularly callous that people dismiss the war in 
the West, saying, ``Oh, it is not serious, it is no war in the West at 
all.'' When you are talking about people who for the most part have 
family ranches, they live on those ranches that are partially private 
lands, where they have winter feed and water, and as an integral part 
of that ranch are the public lands in which grazing can take place in 
the summer along with the wildlife that is there. People who want to 
continue this kind of a way of life--and by the way, it is the only way 
these resources can be fully utilized, to integrate them in the private 
and public sector together--people who want to raise their children on 
the land, who want to stay in business.

  Wyoming is the largest coal producer in the Nation, much of it on 
public lands. So we have to find a way to have leasing availability for 
that resource, low-sulfur coal, the best opportunity for nonpolluting 
energy in this country.
  So I guess it is sort of interesting; the Secretary has been out a 
number of times, has had so-called listening sessions, which have 
basically become talking sessions, and he has come away, as he did in 
my State last week, with a lack of trust, with the idea that what he is 
seeking to do is not really in the interest of the people who live 
there, not really in the national interest, but rather an agenda that 
has been formulated by the Secretary to make changes, and sometimes 
changes where there is no particular reason to consider that.
  Pricing in grazing has been one of the issues, a good issue; people 
who are involved are willing to take a look at it and put it into a 
formula and use it on the basis of studies and raise prices, and they 
will do that. But the political setting, the political setting of 
grazing fees just does not go.
  I just want to make one point: The high-profile issue has been 
grazing fees and cattle on public lands. But the fact is it goes far, 
far beyond that. It has to do with, as I mentioned to you, with oil and 
gas and timber and massive changes in water, where States have had the 
constitutional right to manage their water in the West; where we have 
had hard-rock mining. There needs to be changes in the mining law, but 
not to eliminate mining in this country nor to eliminate the jobs that 
go with it. The National Biological Survey, which threatens, really, 
the private land use in the intermingled lands of this kind.
  Wetlands. Now a city in our State was willing to replace wetlands in 
order to enlarge the water system. The EPA says, ``Oh, no, you can't do 
that.'' Of course, they can.
  Gun control. Forest Service puts out regulations limiting where 
farmers and ranchers can carry guns.
  So the idea that there is not a war in the West is simply not true. 
There is indeed. We need to use those lands multiply, and local people 
need to be involved in that decision.

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