[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 20]
[Senate]
[Pages 29685-29687]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             FEDERAL LANDS

  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I wanted to take some time, since we have 
a little on our hands this morning, to talk about an issue that 
continues to be very important for our part of the country, the West. 
The Presiding Officer comes from a State that is similar to Wyoming. 
The ownership of land by the Federal Government continues to be an 
issue, and I think it is more of an issue now than it has been in the 
past, largely because of some of the actions in recent times by the 
administration of not only obtaining more land for the Federal 
Government but also changing some of the management techniques.
  This issue, of course, has been one of controversy for a long time 
within the West. The West has large amounts of land that belongs to the 
Federal Government. So when you develop the economy of your State, 
management of the lands has a great deal to do with it. In Wyoming, for 
example, the three leading economic activities are agriculture, 
minerals, and tourism, all of which have a great deal to do with public 
resources, with lands. So it is one of the most important issues with 
which we deal.
  It is interesting to see the percentages of Federal land holdings by 
State. As shown on this chart, you can see that here in the East 
generally 1 to 5 percent of the lands are federally

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owned. When you get to the West, it becomes 35 to 65 percent and as 
high as 87 percent in some States. So when you talk about how you 
operate an economy in New Jersey or in North Carolina, it is quite 
different. When you talk about public lands, it is seen quite 
differently. The impact in States such as that is relatively minor, 
where the impact in the West is much greater. Look at Alaska, for 
example. It makes a great deal of difference.
  There are several kinds of lands, of course, and nobody argues with 
the idea that the purpose of dealing with these public lands is to 
preserve the resources. All of us want to do that. The second purpose, 
however, is to allow for its owners, the American people, who use them, 
to have access to these lands for hunting, fishing, grazing, timber--
all of the things that go with multiple use and healthy public lands. 
Really, that is where we are. No one argues about the concept of these 
resources, but there is great argument about the details of how you do 
it.
  One of the things that is happening now--and part of it is in the 
appropriations bills that will be before us tomorrow--relates to the 
purchase of lands and changing some of the management techniques so the 
lands become less accessible to the people who live there, less a part 
of the society of these States.
  It is difficult to see on this chart, but this is Wyoming, where over 
50 percent of the land belongs to the Federal Government. The green 
colors are Forest Service lands which were set aside by action of the 
Congress, action of the Federal Government, for specific purposes, and 
we still fulfill those purposes.
  Some of the lands were set aside as wilderness. When the wilderness 
was set aside, others were proclaimed to be for multiple use. Before 
that changed from multiple use to wilderness, it said specifically in 
the Wyoming wilderness bill that Congress had to act on it. The red 
area is Federal lands, Indian reservations. Yellow is the BLM lands. 
The light green in the corners is national parks which were set aside 
for a very specific purpose. That purpose continues to be one that is 
very close to the hearts of the American People. I happen to be 
chairman of the parks subcommittee and work on those very much. The 
yellow--the majority of the public lands in our State, as is the case 
with most other Western States--is Bureau of Land Management lands. 
Interestingly enough, when the Homestead Act was in place and people 
were taking homesteads in the West, BLM lands were basically residual 
lands, not set aside for any particular purpose. They were simply there 
when the homestead expired, and they are there now to be managed for 
multiple use.
  Let me go back to the notion that this is what has created some of 
the current controversy--the fact that these lands change when they are 
used differently. Congress should have a role in this. This is not a 
monarchy, a government where the President can decide suddenly he is 
going to acquire more lands without the authority of the Congress. That 
is kind of where we are now. There are several of these programs that 
are threatening to the West, including the concept of the Federal 
Government's intrusion into the whole of society in States in the West.
  A number of things are happening. One is the so-called ``land 
legacy'' that the administration is pushing. It is an idea presented by 
the President--I think largely by Vice President Gore--that the Federal 
Government somehow should own a great deal more land than it owns now. 
Indeed, they have asked for a set-aside from the offshore royalties of 
a billion dollars a year to acquire more lands. In many cases, their 
idea is not to have any involvement of the Congress at all but simply 
to allow them to have this money set aside, without the appropriations 
process, so that they can purchase additional lands each year. A 
portion of that is in this year's Interior program, but the big one, of 
course, is still controversial in the Congress, and it was being dealt 
with in the House last week or the week before.
  So the question is, if there is to be more Federal land, where should 
it be? The other is, if there is to be more, what is the role of 
Congress to authorize it and appropriate funds for that as opposed to 
having a sort of monarchy set-aside to do that.
  The other, of course, in my view, has to do with the use of these 
dollars. We talked about the parks. That is one of the things. We have 
378 parks, or units, managed by the Park Service in this country; they 
are very important to Americans. The infrastructure in many of them 
needs to be repaired and updated. I argue this money that might be 
available from these kinds of sources ought to be used for the 
infrastructure of these parks so that we can continue to support the 
maintenance and availability of enjoyable visits for the American 
people. I believe we need to do that.
  Another that has come along more recently is a pronouncement by the 
Forest Service that they would like to set aside 40 million acres in 
the forest as ``roadless.'' Nobody knows what ``roadless'' means. Is 
that a synonym for wilderness? We don't know. We had a hearing to try 
to get that answered by the Secretary of Agriculture and by the Chief 
of the Forest Service. We were unable to do so. Many people I know 
believe that would limit the access and would not allow people to hunt, 
for example, in places where they aren't able to walk because they are 
elderly, or whatever the reason, and that it will be most difficult to 
have a healthy forest, where you cannot remove some of the trees that 
are matured and, rather, let them die or let insects infect them. These 
are the kinds of things that are of great concern.
  There is also what is called an action plan, the conservation of 
water action plan, which seems to be put forth by EPA and other 
agencies more to control management of the land than clean water. The 
clean water action plan says you can do certain things and you cannot 
do certain things. The key is there needs to be participation by people 
who live there. There needs to be some participation in cooperating 
agencies, participation with the State, participation with the agencies 
there, so we can work together to preserve the resource but also 
preserve access to those resources and continue to allow them to be 
part of the recreational economy in our States.
  There are other programs that also put at risk the opportunity to use 
these lands, such as endangered species, about which there is a great 
controversy in terms of whether there is a scientific basis for the 
listing of endangered species, whether there are, in fact, ways to 
delist endangered species when it is proven there has been a recovery 
in terms of numbers. You can argue forever about that. These all go 
together to make public lands increasingly more difficult for owner 
utilization.
  I guess one of the reasons that is difficult--and people who work 
with these problems are basically in the minority--is that the Western 
States are the ones that have almost all Federal ownership.
  With respect to some of the things we might do with regard to the 
land legacy and the idea of putting money aside for public land 
purchase, we are prepared to try to put in this bill some sort of 
protection and say we ought not, in States that have more than 25 
percent of their surface owned by the Federal Government, to have any 
net gain--that there may be things the Federal Government ought to 
acquire because they have a unique aspect to them, but they can also 
dispose of some so that there is no net increase. I think that is a 
reasonable thing to do and one we ought to pursue.
  In terms of endangered species, it is very difficult to do anything 
with a law that has been in place for 20 years. We have 20 years of 
experience as to how to better manage it. Everyone wants to preserve 
these species. But they shouldn't have to set aside private and public 
lands to do that. We believe if we would require more science in terms 
of nomination and listing--and indeed, when a species is listed, to 
have a recovery plan at the same time--that would be very important.
  One of the other activities is the Natural Environmental Protection 
Act,

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NEPA, a program in which there are studies designed to allow people to 
participate in decisions. Is that a good idea? Studies could absolutely 
go on forever.
  We are faced currently, for example, with the problem in grazing. 
Obviously, you have a renewable resource, grass. It is reasonable to 
have grazing. You have that on BLM forest lands. Now we find in this 
case that, under BLM, you can get through the NEPA process to renew a 
contract, and they say: Too bad; your contract is dead, unless we can 
get to it, and we can't.
  We are trying to change that. It is an unreasonable thing to do. If 
there is all of this difficulty with the agency, we ought to change 
that. Indeed, there is language in this year's appropriations bill to 
do something about it.
  I think we are faced with trying to find the best way to deal in the 
future with public lands. In States where there is 50 percent or more 
of land in Federal ownership, there is no reason we can't continue to 
protect those resources; that we can't continue to utilize those lands 
in a reasonable way; that we can't involve people locally in the States 
in making these decisions and making shared judgments. We can do that.
  Unfortunately, we find this administration moving in the other 
direction--moving further way from working with NEPA. We hear about all 
of these kinds of partnerships. A partnership means there is some 
equality in working together. That is not the kind of partnership we 
hear a lot about from the Federal agency. I am hopeful that there can 
be.
  We are very proud of these resources: Yellowstone Park, Devil's 
Tower--all kinds of great resources in Wyoming. Here is where I grew 
up, near the Shoshone Forest. I am delighted there is a forest there. 
It should be, and it should continue to be there. But we need to have a 
cooperative management process to do that. I am committed. I am also 
committed to working toward that in the coming session.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I understand we are in a period of morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 
30 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. President.

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