[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 127 (Monday, September 27, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11470-S11472]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         VALUE OF PUBLIC LANDS

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I came to the floor today to speak about an 
event which happened this past Saturday that in many States across the 
Nation went relatively unnoticed. It was National Public Lands Day. It 
was a time for all Americans to recognize the value we have in our 
public lands and a time for all of us to give a little something back 
by volunteering a Saturday to lend a helping hand to improve our public 
lands.
  If you were out and about, you noticed volunteers both in this city 
on some of our parkways and across the area. But across the Nation, 
over 20,000 volunteers took some of their precious time. We all know 
that weekend time in a busy populace is a precious time and, by taking 
it, they performed over $1 million worth of improvements to our public 
lands--from helping construct to simply cleaning up and picking up.
  In recognition of National Public Lands Day, I want to spend a few 
minutes today reflecting on the value of our public lands and on what 
the future holds for them.
  There are about 650 million acres of public lands in the United 
States. They represent a vast portion of the total land mass of our 
continent. However, most of these lands are concentrated in the West. 
Coming from Idaho, I recognize that very clearly. There are some States 
where over 82 percent of that State's land mass is public. In my State 
of Idaho, it is nearly 63 percent of the entire geography that is 
owned, managed, and controlled by the Federal Government, or by the 
citizens of this country.
  There can be a great beneficial effect for our public lands, for all 
of us. For starters, there are a great many resources available on our 
public lands--from our renewable forests to the opportunities to raise 
cattle on them, to drilling for oil, to mining for minerals from the 
surface. And the subsurface of our public lands holds a great deal of 
resources. We all depend on it for our lives. Without question, our 
public lands have been the treasure chest of the great wealth of our 
Nation.
  Many of our resources have come from the utilization of the resource 
of the public land. Having these resources available has afforded not 
only the opportunities I have spoken to but it has clearly advanced 
some of our governmental services because most of those resources reap 
a benefit to the Treasury, and from the Treasury to our schools, our 
roads, and our national defense. All of these resources and their 
revenues have helped ease the tax burden on the average taxpayer.
  Not only are the taxpayers of our country rightfully the owners of 
that public land, but we, the Government, and all of us as citizens are 
beneficiaries of those resources.
  Just as important though is the recreational opportunity and the 
environment that our public lands offer. Every day, people hike and 
pack in the solitude of our wilderness areas, climb rocks, ski, camp, 
snowmobile, use their off-road vehicles, hunt, fish, picnic, boat, and 
swim--the list goes on and on of the level of recreation and 
expectations we have coming from our public land.
  Because the lands are owned by all of us, the opportunity has existed 
for everyone to use the land within reasonable limits. Certainly our 
responsibility as a policymaker--as I am, and as are all Senators--in 
shaping the use of these lands, I am hopeful that this year Republicans 
and Democrats in the Senate can work together to pass balanced 
legislation that corrects the abuses by both debtors and creditors in 
the bankruptcy system.
  But this partisan attempt to prematurely cut off debate before we 
even started to consider this bill does not bode well for that effort.

[[Page S11471]]

  I hope that once this cloture motion is defeated, the Senate will 
begin a reasonable and fair debate on bankruptcy reform legislation 
that reflects a balancing of rights between debtors and creditors.

  Those public lands have been a historic and primary responsibility of 
the Congress itself. However, in the last couple of decades several 
changes have occurred.
  We are in the midst of a slow and methodical attack on our very 
access as individuals to the public land itself. It started with the 
resources industries. That was the restrictive nature or the change in 
public policy that limited access by our resource industries and how 
they might use the land. Some would say, well, that is merely important 
for the preservation of the land. But what we have also seen is an ever 
increasing attitude to keep people--just simple people who want to hike 
or backpack, to have access to that land--off the land or in some way 
control their very character on the land.
  Some radical groups are fighting to halt all resource management on 
our public lands, and they are working to restrict, as I have 
mentioned, the elemental human access to those lands. On the Targhee 
National Forest in Idaho, the Forest Service tore up the land to keep 
people off. I was out touring that forest and came upon over 300 huge 
gouges in roads that had been contracted by the Forest Service to stop 
access to the land. It was all in the name of an endangered species. 
But at the same time, if that kind of damage or destruction had 
occurred at the hands of a mining company or a logging company, the 
owners of those companies would have been in court. Here it was merely 
the forest land saying, oh, well, this huge tank trap or gouge in the 
road to stop traffic was our way of protecting the land. I am not sure 
who was the protector in that instance.
  Additionally, we are seeing the implementation of dramatic changes in 
the philosophy of the public's access to our Forest Service from 
openness to an element of closeness. At the time when Gifford Pinchot 
convinced Teddy Roosevelt to remove forested lands from the public 
preserve and make them forested preserves, the concept was that these 
lands were open. While they were protected, to be utilized for forest 
and to be maintained for water quality and wildlife habitat, always the 
people could have access.
  Slowly but surely, there has been a change in that attitude. That 
attitude has dramatically shifted to one in which the Forest Service 
would now suggest to you that our U.S. forests are closed to the public 
unless designated open. Gifford Pinchot would roll over in his grave as 
not only one of our Nation's great conservationists but one of the 
great advocates for forested reserves. The reason he would is that he 
said: If you do not associate the people to their land, ultimately the 
land becomes the king's land, much like feudal Europe in which the 
forests were the King's and the serf could not tread on that land 
unless given express permission by the King.
  When the forest is closed--and that is what is being talked about 
today, and in many instances the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, 
Chief Dombeck, who is an advocate of this philosophy, ``closed unless 
designated open''--then where do you go to gain permission to access 
your public lands? You go to the Government. In essence, you go to the 
King. You go to the ruler.
  I don't think that is what Americans want. While Americans may differ 
on how they want their public land managed and for what reason they 
want it managed, there is one thing I doubt any of us would argue 
about, and that is that the Federal Government should not have the 
absolute right to tell our citizens who may or may not tread upon these 
lands.
  All of us should be outraged by a Forest Service attitude that it is 
their land and they control it and they will give permission, they will 
be the implementors of policy in a way that will determine who is 
locked off the land. That, in my opinion, appears to be their agenda.
  That very forest in Idaho I told you about, where large tank traps 
appeared in the public roads, just in their new forest plan they have 
changed the philosophy of the management to suggest that all roads are 
closed and, therefore, the forest is closed unless designated open.
  Yes, we must manage our public lands responsibly, which includes 
restrictions on some activities and in some areas with the preservation 
of the land's environment. For the water quality, for the wildlife 
habitat, for all of those fundamental reasons, we enjoy our public land 
base. But we should not sit here so snidely as to suggest that a 
Federal agency has the right to say you may enter or you may not enter 
the land. Yet more and more forests and public lands of our country are 
now receiving those kinds of restrictions.
  Some people like to hike in our back country, others like simply the 
peace and the solitude, while others prefer to ride ATVs in the woods. 
Some prefer to camp in a more developed facility, while others prefer 
primitive spots.

  The point is, the recreational opportunities on our public lands 
should be as diverse as America's public interests. On the same note, 
we can use the natural resources we need in an environmentally 
responsible manner and still have plenty of opportunities to recreate. 
In fact, recreation and resource interests can team together to help 
each other.
  In my own State of Idaho in the Clearwater National Forest we have 
seen a dramatic decline in our elk herds in large part because of a 
lack of habitat. This is a massive amount of public land. Yet by its 
management--the suppression of wildfires, the inability of the Forest 
Service to manage using controlled burns but changing the habitat and 
the character of the land itself--one of the Nation's largest elk herds 
collapsed. In the winters of 1996 and 1997, thousands of elk starved to 
death simply by the mismanagement of our public lands by a Forest 
Service that would not seek the diversity of landscape that is so 
critically necessary to maintain those unique elk herds and the 
vibrancy of the land itself.
  Rather than fight each other, elk conservation groups, the Forest 
Service, and the timber industry are coming together to develop a plan 
to mechanically thin some of the areas and use prescribed burns and 
others to treat nearly a million acres to increase elk habitat. Yet on 
the outside there are some conservation groups that say even thinning a 
tree is cutting a tree and should not be allowed. How absurd.
  Why deny the right of good stewards to manage land in a way that 
creates diversity and balance so that Idaho can reclaim its heritage of 
having a large elk herd, and at the same time having more than 4 
million acres of wilderness, and at the same time having a vibrant 
Forest Service products industry, while at the same time having growth 
within the State as one of its No. 1 economies tourism and recreation. 
That is a wise and balanced approach toward managing our public lands 
instead of this single attitude of ``lock 'em out, preserve, and deny'' 
the ability to manage public resources in a diverse and balanced way. 
We need all of our public lands to be used in a way that appeals to all 
of our citizens, not to just a single, relatively narrow-minded group.
  Public land management, because of this, is now embroiled in fights, 
in appeals, in litigation. Every decision made by our public lands 
managers ends up in court, oftentimes fought out over weeks, months, 
and years. While all of that has been going on, the Congress of the 
United States has sat idly by and watched, simply hoping it would play 
itself out when, in fact, the fight seems to have intensified.
  Differing interests have to come together to realize we all have one 
common goal: To use our land in a responsible manner, in a sustainable 
manner, in a balanced manner, in the kind of way that will meet most of 
our interests, and do so to assure a quality environment and an 
abundant wildlife habitat. I believe all of those things can be done.
  Over the last several years, I have held over 50 hearings on the 
management of the U.S. Forest Service and why it can't make decisions, 
and when it does, why those decisions are in court. Why has it become 
largely the most dysfunctional agency of our Federal Government? Yet it 
has a phenomenally great legacy of appropriate management and 
responsible caretakership of the land.

[[Page S11472]]

  As a result of that, I have introduced S. 1320, a comprehensive 
reform on the public land laws primarily governing the Forest Service 
but also reflecting on the BLM. However, until we all realize there is 
room for everyone on our public lands instead of just ``lock 'em up and 
keep 'em out'' solely in the name of the environment; that we can 
utilize our resources in a wise and sustainable manner; that we can 
continue to accept these lands in a way that offer a resource to our 
Treasury, along with a resource to our mind; then I think we will 
continue to be in litigation. Successful management of our public lands 
realizes a balanced approach, a diverse approach, and one that I think 
our country can take great comfort in the legacy of the past. In all 
fairness, we ought to be a bit embarrassed about our current situation.

  Last Saturday was National Public Lands Day. It shouldn't be viewed 
as just one that talks about the quality of our parks and recreational 
areas. It should be reflective of the millions and millions of acres of 
public lands in my State and other Western States that by their own 
diversity assure an abundant resource, abundant revenue, and 
opportunities not only for recreational solitude but economic 
opportunity in the communities that reside on and near those public 
lands. I hope a lifetime from now our public lands will be as vibrant 
as they are today, but will be managed in a much more diverse and 
multiple-use way than it appears we are heading at this moment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). Under the previous order the 
Senator from New Mexico is recognized.

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