[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 96 (Thursday, July 21, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 21, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
    U.S. FOREST SERVICE DELAYS RESCUE IN A PROTECTED WILDERNESS AREA

  (Mr. ROHRABACHER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks and to include 
extraneous material.)
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, the motto of the Boy Scouts is: ``Be 
prepared.'' Fortunately one young scout, lost in New Mexico in the 
wilderness, was prepared because the U.S. Forest Service felt that it 
was Federal policy not to help him.
  After being separated from his group for 2 days, 14-year-old Scout 
Robert Graham was spotted by a police helicopter. But the Forest 
Service would not let the helicopter land.
  You see, Robert was in a protected wilderness area. And, according to 
the Forest Service rules, mechanized vehicles are banned from such 
pristine places.
  So, Robert was forced to spend another night abandoned in the 
wilderness until the Forest Service gave in and let him be rescued.
  This from an administration that was elected on a theme of putting 
people first. Now we know the real priorities of the Clinton 
administration--environmental correctness first, the Boy Scouts last.
  Mr. Speaker, with the atheists trying to force the Scouts to take 
``God'' out of the Scout oath, he was lucky that, after he was rescued, 
he was not interrogated to see if he was not praying on public grounds.

         [From the Washington Times, Wednesday, July 20, 1994]

                     Be prepared. Be very prepared

       Can the U.S. government see the forest for the trees? It's 
     not an idle question. Consider weekend news reports that the 
     U.S. Forest Service actually prevented a helicopter search 
     team from landing in New Mexican wilderness to pick up a 
     teen-age Boy Scout who had been missing two days. The agency 
     subsequently allowed the rescue one day later, but one can't 
     help wondering if the service hasn't lost sight of whom it's 
     serving.
       The story goes something like this: A Chicago Boy Scout 
     troop of 14 boys accompanied by eight adults set out for a 
     weeklong wilderness survival hike in the mountains of New 
     Mexico's Santa Fe National Forest. Along the way, three of 
     the scouts somehow got separated from the rest of the pack. 
     Two of the boys were found in short order. But 14-year-old 
     Eagle Scout Robert Bruce Graham II was not.
       Two days after Graham disappeared, a police helicopter 
     spotted the missing boy and sought permission to land and 
     pick him up. Back came the astonishing response from Forest 
     Service officials: Request denied.
       Why? Well, the ``Forest Service decided that it wasn't a 
     life-or-death situation,'' said a spokesman for the New 
     Mexico Department of Public Safety, ``and they wouldn't let 
     us do what we thought we had to do. We treat every call as an 
     emergency. But the Forest Service has its own way of seeing 
     things.''
       The good news is that young Graham survived the experience, 
     spending a third night alone in the wilderness in near-
     freezing temperatures with little more than ginger snaps and 
     water, before the Forest Service relented and allowed another 
     helicopter expedition to pick him up. But what exactly was 
     the agency's ``own way of seeing things'' in this case?
       It seems that the area in which the Boy Scouts were hiking 
     is what's called a ``wilderness area.'' According to rules 
     concocted by the agency, that means ``mechanized vehicles'' 
     are banned from the area unless it's a matter of life or 
     death. The agency's rescue coordinator, Toby Gass, sought 
     permission from her supervisor, Al Defler, to allow the 
     helicopter to land. But a Forest Service spokesman told this 
     editorial page that Mr. Defler was not available at the time. 
     ``I don't know where he was,'' said the spokesman. ``You know 
     how things happen.''
       Or don't happen. At any rate, Ms. Gass subsequently refused 
     to allow the police to land, in part because a ground search 
     party was supposed to be in the vicinity. So police could 
     only drop the boy a note, telling him to stay where he was. 
     But when the search party still could not find him, police 
     called in a second helicopter to pick him up.
       What exactly the Forest Service was so worried about isn't 
     clear. Was the agency worried that the helicopter would 
     somehow hurt one of its pristine trees or emit fumes into one 
     of its pristine watersheds? Imagine another scenario: that 
     the boy could have fallen down one of the agency's pristine 
     ravines or been attacked by one of its pristine animals while 
     the agency dallied. The situation is all the more ludicrous 
     when one considers that if it had been a parent, rather than 
     the federal government, who had left the boy in harm's way, 
     everybody from Janet Reno on down would now be dragging the 
     culprit into court on child-abuse charges.
       Spokesmen for the Forest Service's parent agency, the 
     Department of Agriculture, say the matter is being reviewed. 
     In the meantime, lessons abound here. Hikers should be under 
     no illusion about where they stand on their government's 
     great chain of being: at the bottom. So, as Boy Scouts like 
     to say, be prepared. Second, lawmakers who pass feel-good 
     legislation that gives sweeping authority to federal agencies 
     to ``protect the environment'' may not fully understand the 
     mischief to which that authority may be put. Presume nothing. 
     Get it in writing. Last, taxpayers who don't like the non-
     service they get for their money should expect more. If not, 
     elections are a good time to ask for a refund.

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