[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 143 (Monday, October 21, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1941-E1942]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        H.R. 3752, THE AMERICAN LAND SOVEREIGNTY PROTECTION ACT

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                               speech of

                             HON. DON YOUNG

                               of alaska

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 4, 1996

  Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, in a rollcall on September 26, 
1996, the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act of 1996, which would 
reestablish the Congress as the ultimate decisionmaker in managing 
public lands and maintain sovereign control of lands in the United 
States, failed--by a 246 to 178 vote--to receive the two-thirds 
majority necessary to suspend the rules and pass the bill. The bill 
simply requires congressional approval of international land 
designations in the United States, primarily UNESCO World Heritage 
Sites and Biosphere Reserves. These designations, as presently handled, 
are an open invitation to the international community to interfere in 
U.S. domestic land-use decisions.
  I am amazed that a single Member of Congress would oppose legislation 
requiring congressional oversight of international land designations 
within the borders of the United States. What is unreasonable about 
Congress insisting that no land be designated for inclusion in 
international land use programs without the clear and direct approval 
of Congress? What is unreasonable about having local citizens and 
public officials participate in decisions on designating land near 
their homes for inclusion in an international land program?
  Many, many Americans from all sections of our country have called my 
office to say that they are concerned about the lack of congressional 
oversight over UNESCO international land designations in the United 
States and to express their support for H.R. 3752. I want to say to 
them that this fight has not ended. I plan to introduce this bill again 
in the 105th Congress.
  I would like to include the following recent articles about the 
debate over H.R. 3752. I urge my colleagues to read these commentaries.

           Congress Fails To Veto U.N. Role in National Parks

                           (By Cliff Kincaid)

       In a sign of mounting anti-United Nations sentiment, Rep. 
     Don Young (R-Alaska) got about 60% of House members--246 to 
     178 (see rollcall next week)--to vote in favor of his 
     ``American Land Sovereignty Protection Act'' (H.R. 3753) on 
     September 26, but because the bill didn't get the two-thirds 
     approval needed under suspension of the rules procedures, it 
     ultimately failed. Thirty-three Democrats voted for the 
     popular piece of legislation, 15 Republicans voted against 
     it.
       The bill would have required congressional approval before 
     federal officials seek special U.N. status for U.S. parks and 
     public lands. It was brought to the House floor just two 
     weeks after Rep. Young had convened an informative September 
     12 hearing of his House Resources. Committee to highlight how 
     the United Nations has been brought in to ``protect'' 
     literally tens of millions of acres of federal land. The 
     hearing focused on how President Clinton complied with a U.N. 
     recommendation to kill a gold mine project outside 
     Yellowstone National Park.
       Citizens and local officials from Montana, New Mexico, 
     Wyoming, Colorado and even New York testified that the United 
     Nations has been involved in labeling public lands in their 
     communities as World Heritage Sites and Biosphere Reserves 
     without their knowledge or consent. They said the U.N. 
     involvement including proposals for ``buffer zones'' around 
     these areas, threatens private property rights, property 
     values and economic development.
       In the United States there are now 20 World Heritage Sites, 
     designated under the terms of a 1972 treaty, and 47 Biosphere 
     Reserves, designated under a 1970 U.N.-sponsored ``Man and 
     the Biosphere'' program that has been implemented without the 
     benefit of a treaty. The programs are run out of the U.N 
     Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 
     Paris.
       According to Rep. Young, these U.N.-designated areas 
     comprise more than 51 million acres--68% of all National 
     Parks, Preserves and Monuments, including the Statute of 
     Liberty and Independence Hall.
       Unwilling to take the side of the United Nations against 
     Congress, not one major environmentalist group accepted an 
     invitation to testify and no Democrats on the committee 
     showed up at the hearing to oppose the bill. The Clinton 
     Administration did, however, send Assistant Interior 
     Secretary George Frampton to testify against the Young bill. 
     Frampton was clearly perturbed by Young's effort to promote 
     his legislation by asking his congressional colleagues, ``Is 
     Boutros Boutros-Ghali zoning land in your district?''
       Ironically, Frampton's own dealings with the United Nations 
     in the Yellowstone matter were a major factor in prompting 
     the hearings and the proposed legislation.


                       clinton's yellowstone deal

       Circumventing the lawful process of completing an 
     Environmental Impact Statement to determine what threat, if 
     any, was posed by a proposed gold mine, Frampton last year 
     invited a foreign U.N. delegation to make a brief visit to 
     Yellowstone, which is both a World Heritage Site and a 
     Biosphere Reserve, to call for a ``buffer zone'' around the 
     park and to declare it ``in danger'' from the mining project. 
     The leader of the delegation was a German, Bernd Von Droste, 
     who has called for global energy taxes to enable the United 
     Nations to better ``protect'' these areas.
       After the U.N intervention, the mining company, Crown Butte 
     Mines Inc., agreed to White House demands to cancel the 
     project in return for a vague presidential promise of some 
     federal land somewhere else. ``This President believed the 
     U.N. has more value than the Congress,'' Rep. Young angrily 
     declared, vowing to push his sovereignty bill and subject 
     Clinton's Yellowstone deal to congressional scrutiny.
       But the administration's Frampton dismissed these concerns. 
     ``People are nervous the U.N. is coming,'' he sniffed. He 
     insisted the U.N. designations simply promote environmental 
     cooperation and actually serve to attract tourists. When 
     told, however, that the United Nations had complained that 
     Yellowstone was too crowded by tourists, he just replied, ``I 
     was not aware of that.'' Indeed, environmental groups not 
     only wanted the gold mine stopped, but have suggested greatly 
     restricting tourism within the park.
       Myron Ebell of Frontiers of Freedom, a group started by 
     former Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R.-Wyo.), said Frampton was part 
     of a ``cabal'' of federal agencies and environmental groups 
     that regard the United Nations as a `'weapon'' in their 
     campaign to deindustrialize America. Paul C. Jones, executive 
     director of the Colorado-based Minerals Exploration 
     Coalition, said the involvement of the United Nations in 
     Yellowstone was ``unprecedented'' and amounted to an 
     international ``land grab.'' The House support for the Young 
     legislation is only one indication that opposition is 
     building.
       Rep. Tim Hutchinson (R.-Ark.) testified that citizens in 
     his own state, including a group called ``Take Back 
     Arkansas,'' had thwarted the designation of the Ozark 
     National Forest as a Biosphere Reserve because they didn't 
     want their ``prized national treasures'' subjected to 
     international agreements that might conflict with U.S. law. 
     In a case involving Mount Mitchell State Park in North 
     Carolina, citizen action forced park authorities to actually 
     take the words ``United Nations'' off a wooden sign leading 
     into the park.
       For her part, Nina Sibal of UNESCO testified that passage 
     of Young's legislation was ``a sovereign decision'' of the 
     United States. Her French UNESCO associate, Pierre Lasserre, 
     however, did venture the opinion that the name of the ``Man 
     and the Biosphere'' program should be changed because it 
     sounds ``sexist.''

               U.N.-Sponsored Aliens Land in Yellowstone

                         (By Gayle M.B. Hanson)

       The Clinton administration allowed an obscure treaty to 
     establish U.N. authority over Yellowstone National Park, the 
     Statue of Liberty and other American sites. House Democrats 
     backed the power grab.
       Okay, so maybe there were only a handful of individuals 
     involved, and maybe they didn't actually arrive in the dead 
     of night protected by whirring black helicopters and hell-
     bent on clandestine maneuvers. But the fact that four members 
     of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural 
     Organization's, or UNESCO's, World Heritage Committee 
     traveled from halfway around the globe to the Idaho-Montana-
     Wyoming border area in summer 1995 to investigate a 
     ``dangerous'' situation unfolding at Yellowstone National 
     Park has some people still scratching their heads in 
     disbelief.
       The aforementioned (dare we say it?) aliens were invited to 
     poke around on their fact-finding mission at Yellowstone by 
     Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife and 
     Parks George Frampton Jr. Frampton, at the behest of the U.S. 
     Park Service and a cavalcade of environmental groups 
     including the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society and 
     the Wilderness Society, an organization Frampton once led, 
     officially sought the intervention of UNESCO's World Heritage 
     Committee to remedy what they called ``extremely serious 
     threats'' by a proposed gold mine near the park.
       The initial correspondence from the environmental groups to 
     the World Heritage Centre in March 1995 requested that 
     Yellowstone be put on the List of the World Heritage in 
     Danger due to the mine that was planned on its perimeter. The 
     World Heritage Centre followed up with a letter to Frampton 
     in June

[[Page E1942]]

     requesting a detailed analysis of the site to determine 
     whether it should be included for consideration as endangered 
     at their July meeting in Paris. On June 27, Frampton 
     responded on behalf of the Clinton administration in a 
     lengthy letter in which he pleaded for intervention by the 
     U.N. group and urged that international investigators 
     immediately be sent to Yellowstone.
       ``[Interior] Secretary Babbit and I are informed of the 
     nongovernmental conservation group concerns as transmitted to 
     the Centre,'' Frampton wrote to Bernd von Droste, the World 
     Heritage Centre director. ``We believe that a potential 
     danger to the values of the park and surrounding waters and 
     fisheries exists and the Committee should be informed that 
     the property as inscribed in the World Heritage List is in 
     danger.''
       In short, invoking a madcap treaty, the Clinton 
     administration accepted U.N. sovereignty in these matters and 
     called upon a U.N. agency to save Yellowstone. Several months 
     later four individuals from the Centre flew to the rescue. 
     ``I was there the entire time they visited,'' says Paul C. 
     Jones, executive director of the Minerals Exploration 
     Coalition, a mining-advocacy group. ``We were in the midst of 
     a very long, very serious, congressionally mandated process 
     to produce an environmental-impact statement on the mine 
     proposed for the park. We were strictly following the rules 
     as spelled out by the National Environmental Protection Act. 
     When suddenly, with the appearance of the U.N., what had been 
     an ordinary process became a political debate. And it was 
     apparent that these people had made up their minds before 
     they even got there.''
       During their visit to the proposed site for New World Mine, 
     north of Cooke City, Mont., the four visitors had the 
     opportunity to interact with many of the more common local 
     species including environmentalists, park-service 
     representatives and mining-industry honchos. In fact, each 
     member of the visiting U.N. team traveled in an overland 
     vehicle (read Jeep) with their own locally supplied good-guy 
     environmentalist and evil mine representative. This allowed 
     for a continuing dialogue to be maintained wherein each side 
     could bark loudly at the other.
       The visitors also took time out from their research to 
     discuss the future of the park with the many reporters who 
     had gathered from around the globe. Adul Wichiencharoen of 
     Thailand, who heads the World Heritage Committee, went so far 
     as to tell a reporter from Montana's Billings Gazette that 
     the park might be improved by the addition of several million 
     additional acres of land. ``Certainly the forest areas around 
     Yellowstone belong to the same ecosystem,'' he said. ``All of 
     these lands must have protection so their integrity is not 
     threatened.''
       The end result was that the visitors returned to the World 
     Heritage Centre, presented their findings in Berlin that 
     November and the world body voted to place Yellowstone on its 
     lists of endangered sites. The resulting international bad 
     press effectively derailed the permit process and in late 
     August the mine owners agreed to a land swap with the U.S. 
     government, ridding them of their parcel of $65 million worth 
     of property in a location yet to be determined.
       Where was Yogi Bear when he was needed? It isn't certain. 
     But the circus of events that took place in the mountains was 
     enough to send House Resources Committee Chairman Don Young 
     of Alaska to urge passage of the American Land Sovereignty 
     Protection Act of 1996 faster than you could say Boutros 
     Boutros-Ghali.
       Young's proposal simply provided that Congress be allowed 
     to assert its authority over what American landmarks make the 
     World Heritage List. The World Heritage List is a product of 
     the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World 
     Cultural and National Heritage, a treaty taking precedence at 
     law over the U.S. Constitution. Since it was adopted in 1972 
     (the United States was its initiator and first signatory), 
     the convention has been used to project the authority of a 
     U.N. agency over an ever-growing list of officially 
     designated cultural and natural sites. Commemorative photos 
     are taken. Plaques are installed at qualifying locations. 
     National sovereignty is eroded.
       At present 496 cultural and natural sites throughout the 
     world are included on the list. They cover a diverse 
     compendium, including such buildings as Independence Hall, 
     the Statue of Liberty and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and such 
     areas of regional and national interest as the Florida 
     Everglades and Mount Everest.
       ``Land designations under the World Heritage and Biosphere 
     Reserve programs have been created with virtually no 
     congressional over-sight and no congressional hearings. The 
     public and local governments are rarely consulted,'' says 
     Young.
       Instead, in the case of the World Heritage List, sites 
     generally are recommended for this internationalization by 
     the National Park Service. Twenty such sites are within the 
     confines of the U.S. borders; two additional sites, 
     Yellowstone and the Everglades, are on the list of endangered 
     heritage sites. Hundreds of additional sites around the globe 
     are pending inclusion on the list. If neither the first 
     McDonald's nor Yankee Stadium has yet to be included, it 
     could be an oversight.
       Certainly the UNESCO folks are looking to improve their 
     holdings. ``An analysis of the World Heritage List has shown 
     that the industrialized world, religious Christian movements, 
     historical cities, historical periods and `elitist' 
     architecture are over-represented,'' according to World 
     Heritage Centre documents. Well, so much for getting 
     McDonald's on the list.
       Now the World Heritage Centre is willing to admit that for 
     the moment it is a dog that barks but has no bite. It can't 
     yet force the United States to do anything about its national 
     parks or turn over the Statue of Liberty. But these people 
     are nothing if not ambitious. Although UNESCO admits that it 
     has no enforcement teeth (which begs the question of why 
     there should be such a list in the first place), the Clinton 
     administration first strongly asserted its desire that 
     Yellowstone be put on the endangered list and then opposed 
     passage of Young's bill, which would have taken nomination of 
     sites to the World Heritage List out from under the 
     relatively opaque operations of the Interior Department and 
     placed them in the hands of Congress.
       ``If Congress wishes to micromanage these international 
     programs, it could assume that responsibility,'' claimed Rep. 
     George Miller of California, the senior Democratic member of 
     the House Resources Committee. ``However, it is very ironic 
     that this Congress is willing to spend its waning days fixing 
     programs that are not broken. . . .''
       Critics slap their heads, roll their eyes and wonder if a 
     treaty really has ceded American sovereignty over the Statue 
     of Liberty and Independence Hall. They note with suspicion 
     the administration's loathing of the proposed Young bill, 
     going so far as to promise a presidential veto had it passed. 
     They ask why we have Clinton protecting a list that 
     supposedly doesn't matter--from a bill that supposedly 
     doesn't matter.
       Some who testified in favor of the bill argue strongly that 
     congressional oversight is constitutional necessity. ``If 
     these international programs are seen as harmless because 
     they are merely symbolic, Congress is entitled to think 
     competing concerns also deserve `symbolic' recognition,'' 
     testified Jeremy A. Rabkin, an expert in constitutional law 
     from Cornell University. ``[The bill] seems to me a modest 
     but useful statement that global enthusiasms should not be 
     allowed to run roughshod over our traditional constitutional 
     principles.''
       But if the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act of 1996 
     didn't stand a chance this time around, and the bill, while 
     it received a majority of votes, did not receive the two-
     thirds vote necessary for it to pass under the rules of 
     suspension, it still is not a fight that's finished. Young 
     has vowed to keep the pressure on when the 105th Congress 
     convenes.
       ``While I'm pleased that a strong majority of the House 
     supported this legislation, I'm amazed that a single member 
     of Congress would oppose having congressional oversight of 
     international land designations within the borders of the 
     United States,'' Young says. Clinton administration claims of 
     U.N. authority over Yellowstone and the Statue of Liberty are 
     meanwhile continuing to give conservatives a bad case of 
     dyspepsia.

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