[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 46 (Thursday, April 23, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2301-H2302]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         RANCHERS IN COLORADO KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE LAND

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I woke up this morning and, doing the usual 
morning, looked at the newspapers and read some of the comments about 
Earth Day yesterday, and I was surprised at some of the remarks that 
were made that seem to want to imply to the American people or convince 
the American people that the way to protect our environment is to have 
a larger and bigger government in Washington, D.C.; that the people in 
Washington, D.C., truly know better than those of you out there who own 
property, who have worked property, who work your land and live your 
land; that the people in Washington, D.C., really should be trusted 
with your water, they should be trusted with utilization of your land, 
they should be trusted with all of the decisions to be made about the 
environment.
  So briefly tonight I wanted to talk to you about a few people that 
live on the land.
  David and Sue Ann Smith, the Smith ranch located in Meeker, Colorado, 
that ranch is what they call a centennial ranch, which means one family 
has been on that ranch more than a hundred years. In the Smith case, it 
is one of the most beautifully managed ranches that I have been on, and 
I have spent a lot of time on it. It is a centennial family, they care 
about it, they make their living off that land.
  Down in Carbondale, Colorado, former Congressman Mike Strang, Mike 
and Kit Strang have their ranch down there. It looks out over Mount 
Sopris. They take care of that land as if it were their own child.
  You go back up to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, Al Strouband's. Al has 
a beautiful ranch up there, Storm King Ranch. He takes care of it. You 
should see what he does with the vegetation, you should see what he 
does with the utilization of the water, how he takes care of the game.
  And not only does Al have a ranch in Colorado, he also has a farm in 
Virginia. Go down and see the farm and what he does with his farm, how 
well manicured it is, the animals that are taken care of, how he takes 
care of the environment, the soil, the water.
  And you come back to Colorado. Go back up to Meeker again, go visit 
Bart and Mary Strang. They have been there a long time, these Strang 
families, long, long time. See how they take care of the land, see how 
protective they are of the environmental issues.
  Go back up to Evergreen, Colorado, to Bill and Leslie Volbright. That 
is the utilization of conservation easements so that they can protect 
their land into the future.
  Or if you want to, go back to Grand Junction, Colorado, Doug and 
Cathy King. I go up there every year to bugle elk. Some of the finest 
elk in the country are up in that area, beautiful aspen trees. You 
should go up there sometime in the fall, should go and ride in the 
pickup truck with Doug and see how much he cares about that land, how 
fragile they are with the land.
  Go to Carbondale, Colorado to Tom and Ruth Perry's ranch; to their 
in-laws, Tom and Rossie Turnbull's. Look at what they do with their 
land and how protective they are.
  You will find three things in common with all of these families. 
Obviously the first thing in common is they care about that land. They 
love that land. They know how important the land was for generations 
before them. They know how important that land is for generations ahead 
of them.
  The second thing they all have in common is no one in Washington, 
D.C., no one in Washington, D.C., no Environmental Protection Agency, 
nobody from Earth First or the National Sierra Club had to march onto 
this property and tell these people how to care for that land. Nobody 
from Washington, D.C. or Earth First or these organizations had to tell 
them about the future generations. Nobody in Washington, D.C. or Earth 
First or any of those programs know anything about the past generations 
of this land.
  The other thing that is in common, they are all Republicans.
  Now when I read the papers this morning, the Democratic Party seems 
to think that through big government, through a larger EPA, through 
organizations like Earth First, that that is the way we ought to 
control and protect our environment. Well, I am telling you they have 
got it all wrong.
  What they need to do is just take a few minutes, go talk to their 
local members, go talk to the local ranchers, go talk to the men and 
women that make their livings off farms and ranches. Take enough time 
to ride around on horseback or in a pickup or walk around, whatever you 
want to do. That land, see how they care for it, see how they talk 
about it, see how they cuddle it like it is a small child, see how they 
talk about future generations, and then reassess whether it is

[[Page H2302]]

necessary for Washington, D.C. to impose their excess regulations, to 
impose some of the utopian ideas and in many cases to drive these 
people off that land.
  You know it is very easy in the East to tell them what to do in the 
West because there is not much government land in the East. In the 
West, my district for example, my district, geographically larger than 
the State of Florida, 20-some-million acres of Federal land. We know 
about that land. We do not need Washington, D.C. to tell us.
  Sometime take a deep breath and go visit a ranch in Colorado.

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