[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[August 12, 1996]
[Pages 1290-1292]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Signing the New World Mine Property Agreement at Yellowstone 
National Park, Wyoming
August 12, 1996

    The President. Thank you. This is not the hardest speech I ever had 
to give. [Laughter] What a happy day.
    Let me thank you, Sue Glidden, for all the work you've done. Just 
before she came up here one of the folks sitting back here with us said, 
``Well, now what are you going to do?'' And she said, ``Now I have my 
life back.'' I'm sure she'll find something to do with it--highly 
productive.
    Thank you very much, Mike Clark, for all the great work you have 
done. Thank you, Mike Finley and Marv Jensen and all the people at 
Yellowstone who do such a magnificent job preserving our Nation's great 
treasure. I'd like to thank John Schmidt and Jim Pipkin. Ian Bayer, 
thank you very much for what you said and for what you've done.
    I can't say enough to thank the other people in the administration; 
Katie McGinty who has been wonderful about this. And you mentioned the 
Vice President; I thank you very much. We have lunch once a week and at 
least every other lunch I asked him or he reported to me on whether this 
was ever going to get done or not. So in the middle of Bosnia and the 
budget and everything, we were--for one year--I know more about this 
some days than I wish I had known. [Laughter] Thank you, Jack Ward 
Thomas.
    I'd like to thank some other people who are here and a couple who 
aren't. Thank you, Senator Birch Bayh, for your role in this. I want to 
thank my good friends Congressman Pat Williams and Congressman Bill 
Richardson for working on this. Bill Richardson has been making peace 
all around the world the last 2 years, but he found time to do this as 
well.
    I want to thank Senator and Mrs. Rockefeller who came up with me. 
Jay and Sharon Rockefeller are your neighbors. As you know, they live 
near the Grand Tetons and are very concerned about it. And I want to 
thank former Wyoming Governor Mike Sullivan and his wife, Jane Sullivan, 
who came up with me, and they've been longtime friends of Hillary's and 
mine.
    And I want to thank all of you who were in that meeting with Hillary 
and with me a year ago. We learned a lot. It was a great occasion for 
us, and we've relived it several times.
    I also want to say a special word of recognition for the two 
families that are behind me. We just hauled them up here. [Laughter] 
They're laughing. Are they agreeing with me? [Laughter] They are the 
Franklin family from Sioux Falls and the Pamprin family from Green Bay, 
Wisconsin. I asked them to come here--asked them to stand up here.
    I asked them to come to make this point. This fight was not simply 
waged by those of you who live here for your families and your community 
and your future. You waged this fight for all the people of the United 
States and, indeed, the people of the world who love and believe in the 
preservation of our natural resources, who come and participate. And I 
thought it was important that somebody be reminded somehow by their 
presence here that there are millions and millions and millions of 
people who will directly benefit from the decision we announced today. 
And you're seeing some of them. We thank you.

[[Page 1291]]

    Let me say, for all kinds of reasons I'm also glad to see that John 
Denver is here today, and thank you very much for coming. And if you 
want to sing, I won't talk. [Laughter] We're glad to have you here.
    Hillary and Chelsea and I came back here this year, drawn by the 
magnet of this magnificent place, reconnecting something that I think is 
in all of us, the yearning to have a bond with the nature that God has 
given us. Yellowstone, as all of you know--but as I think we should 
remind the country today--our first national park has our largest herd 
of elk and bison; more than 200 geysers; marvelous, pristine lakes and 
majestic mountains; places where we can teach our children about the 
power and the mysteries of nature.
    Yellowstone was entrusted into our care as a people, a whole people, 
more than 120 years ago now. And today we are saying to the rest of the 
world, to the rest of our country, and to future generations of America, 
we have been worthy of that trust, and we are giving it on to our 
children and our children's children.
    Again, I want to thank those who were part of the Yellowstone 
dialog. I want to thank Senator Baucus, who could not be here today, for 
his five-point plan for maximum protection of the park before the 
proposed mine could go forward. I want to thank the members of my 
Cabinet who are not here, including especially Secretary Babbitt and 
Secretary Glickman and EPA Administrator Browner and Attorney General 
Reno, because they all supported this as well. And I wish they could be 
here with us to celebrate this day.
    The agreement that has been reached with Crown Butte to terminate 
this project altogether proves that everyone can agree that Yellowstone 
is more precious than gold. As has been said before, this is a victory 
for everyone involved. The American people and our future win because 
Yellowstone will be protected from the environmental hazards of mining. 
Crown Butte's shareholders win because their property rights will be 
protected. We are all protected from years and years of expensive and 
bitter litigation. And while there is still work to do and work in which 
members of the general public must and will be involved, we are going to 
move forward. And this signing today means that it will come out the way 
so many of you have worked for, for so many years.
    Mining jobs are good jobs, and mining is important to our national 
economy and to our national security. But we can't have mines 
everywhere, and mines that could threaten any national treasures like 
Yellowstone--that's too much to ask of the American people. The company 
has recognized this, and we thank them. Again, I want to emphasize they 
are not only walking away from a gold mine, they have also agreed to 
finance the cleanup of historic mining pollution that predates their 
work at the site. That is a very important part of this agreement, and 
the company deserves a lot of credit for it, and we ought to appreciate 
what they're doing.
    Again, I want to thank Ian Bayer and Joe Baylis of Crown Butte for 
their extraordinary commitment. Let me thank the Members of Congress 
again, those who are here and Senator Baucus, who isn't, and also my 
senior Senator and a great friend of Yellowstone and the Nation's 
environment, Senator Dale Bumpers, who very much wanted to be with us 
today.
    I also want to say in closing that the way this was done should 
become a model for America's challenges, not only in the environment but 
in other areas as well. When we deal with problems of national 
significance that have to be resolved by people who understand the 
particulars and who will be most affected by it, it will be well to 
remember how this was done. Yes, I did say that I wanted to preserve 
this park. And yes, I did put the Vice President and Katie McGinty and 
the Cabinet on it. But the reason it worked, especially given the way 
the mining law works, as all of you know, is that we had a collaborative 
process that involved people reflecting all the interests involved who 
worked in good faith. That is the way we have to meet America's 
challenges as we move into this new century.
    We don't have to make a choice between the environment and the 
economy. We don't have to have every single challenge we face drag on 
forever and ever and ever, into court suit after court suit after court 
suit, being fodder for politicians that campaign from rhetoric that 
divides us instead of unites us. All of you have proved that America can 
be better than that. This is a very, very great day for our country, not 
only because what we have done is right but because of the way we have 
done it. That is right as well.

[[Page 1292]]

    When Yellowstone was created as the world's first national park over 
120 years ago, it was as a result of a bipartisan agreement and a 
consensus which existed at that time that this place was too precious 
not to be preserved. God created the mountains of Yellowstone and the 
minerals beneath them, but it is up to us to preserve them. You have 
done that today. And you have done it in the right way.
    So I ask you today as you leave here to make sure that we all teach 
our children and grandchildren the lessons we have learned today, to 
make sure that future generations of our country never forget that we 
have something here we can never replace but also never forget that when 
we meet each other across the lines that divide us in good faith, with 
honest, open hearts and a real desire to move forward together, we can 
do it.
    We celebrate that today. And as your President, I am very grateful 
for every single one of you who played a role in this historic moment 
for America.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.
    Now, I can't forget the actual purpose for which we came. [Laughter] 
Katie, Mike, and Ian are going to sign the agreement.

[At this point, the agreement was signed.]

    The President. We're adjourned.

Note: The President spoke at 11:25 a.m. at Barronette Peak Overlook. In 
his remarks, he referred to Sue Glidden, owner, Cooke City General 
Store, Cooke City, MT; Mike Clark, executive director, Greater 
Yellowstone Coalition; Michael V. Finley, superintendent, and Marvin 
Jensen, deputy superintendent, Yellowstone National Park; John Schmidt, 
Associate Attorney General, Department of Justice; James Pipkin, 
Counselor to the Secretary of the Interior; Ian Bayer, president, Battle 
Mountain Canada Ltd.; Jack Ward Thomas, chief, U.S. Forest Service; 
former Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana; singer John Denver; and Joe 
Baylis, president, Crown Butte Mines, Inc.