    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [January 12, 1999]
    [Pages 32-35]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks Announcing the Lands Legacy Initiative
    January 12, 1999

        Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for
    that welcome. Thank you, Jean Mason, for taking
    the tour with us and for the work you do with the neighborhood
    association. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for
    showing up here today and being with us. Jean was telling us that a lot
    of the schoolchildren in Washington, DC, come to the Arboretum every
    year on tours. I hope your presence here and her remarks here will lead
    even more of the city's children to find their way to this remarkable
    place.
        I'd like to thank Thomas Elias for the
    tour that he gave the Vice President and me
    and Jean today. And I thank Secretary
    Babbitt for his strong leadership for the
    environment, especially in the area that we're discussing today, and
    Deputy Agriculture Secretary Rich Rominger
    and the other representatives here from the Agriculture Department, the
    Commerce Department, the EPA.
        And I want to thank Theodore Roosevelt IV for being faithful to his family and his national heritage
    in all the wonderful work he's done. And I'd like to say just a special
    word--I see my good friend Senator Gaylord Nelson out there--people in public life have periodic
    chances to make an impact that will last far beyond their own lives. I
    think Senator Nelson certainly has.
        Six and a half years ago, in the summer of 1992, in the late spring,
    when I first talked to Al Gore about
    joining the ticket in the '92 election, this--what we're here to do
    today--this is one of the things that I talked to him about. And I said,
    ``I want you to come help me. There are things you know more about than
    I do.'' We differ on how many and what they are. [Laughter] But anyway,
    I said, ``You know, there are things you know more about than I do.''
    And I said, ``We can make a difference that will last forever, for as
    long as the United States lasts.'' And he has been faithful to that in
    this administration, and I'm very grateful to him.
        I also want to thank George Frampton
    for the work that he has done to put this proposal together.
        We just took this tour to learn about the vital research the
    Agriculture Department does here, to also hear about the young children,
    the families that use this facility. I also heard

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    about the elementary schoolers who grow vegetables and donate much of
    their harvest to the D.C. Central Kitchen. I heard about the AmeriCorps
    members and hundreds of other dedicated volunteers who work here to make
    sure that we'll always have this beautiful sanctuary in the middle of
    our Capital City.
        I'd like to mention one of them who is here, Mary Morose, over here. Thank you for being here. She is a retired
    Government geologist who recently donated more than $1 million of her
    life's savings to help ensure that the Arboretum will always be here,
    for the children to see. Thank you, and God bless you.
        We're just here trying to follow Mary's lead. We think every child
    in every community ought to have a chance to grow up around tall trees
    as well as tall buildings, to know what vegetables look like when
    they're growing in the ground, not just when they're in the grocery
    store, to know what it feels like to walk on a carpet of pine needles as
    well as one of asphalt.
        At the dawn of the century, many Americans saw nature only as a
    resource to be exploited or an obstacle to be overcome. We can all take
    pride, each of us, in the work that we have done and will do. But it
    really is truly astonishing that at the dawning of the industrial age in
    America, Theodore Roosevelt even then knew nature was a divine gift,
    that old-growth forests were more than trees to be cut down, that a
    pristine peak was more than a repository of ore. He set aside millions
    of acres of forests and mountains and valleys and canyons, land shaped
    by the hand of God over hundreds of millions of years. He defined his
    great central task as leaving this land even a better land for our
    descendants than it is for us. In the last 100 years, I think only his
    kinsman, Franklin Roosevelt, approached his devotion to setting aside
    land and preserving resources.
        We have tried over these last 6 years to fulfill that vision. We
    have set aside more than 1\1/2\ million acres in the spectacular red
    rock canyons in Utah. And I might say, I think more and more folks out
    there have decided it's not such a bad idea. [Laughter] We have
    protected vast acres of the Mojave Desert of California, designating
    three new national parks; saved more than 400,000 pristine acres of land
    in Alaska. We're about to complete an historic agreement to save vast
    tracts of ancient redwoods in California. We have worked hard to
    preserve the Florida Everglades and to restore much of them; and put a
    stop to a massive mining operation planned for right next to
    Yellowstone, America's very first national park.
        But we have a lot to do. All of you know that. Our population is
    growing; our cities are growing; our commitment to conservation must
    grow as well. We'll never have a better time to act because of the
    unprecedented prosperity, because we had our first surplus this year--or
    last year--in nearly 30 years. And we ought to remember what Theodore
    Roosevelt said, ``We are not building this country of ours for a day. We
    have to make sure it lasts through the ages.''
        So today I am proud to announce a lands legacy initiative: $1
    billion to meet the conservation challenges of a new century, fully paid
    for in my new balanced budget, more than doubling our already
    considerable commitment to protect America's land. It represents the
    single largest annual investment in protecting our green and open spaces
    since Theodore Roosevelt set our Nation on the path of conservation
    nearly a century ago. And to keep on that path, we will be working with
    Congress to create a permanent funding stream for this purpose,
    beginning in 2001.
        The first part of the plan builds directly on Theodore Roosevelt's
    conservation legacy by adding new crown jewels to our endowment of
    natural resources. Next year alone, we will dedicate $440 million,
    largely from the sale of oil from existing offshore oil leases, to
    acquiring and protecting precious lands and coastal waters. Secretary
    Babbitt and I were talking about it on the way
    in.
        Among our many priorities, we intend to secure an additional 450,000
    acres of private land in and around the new Mojave and Joshua Tree
    National Parks, to expand beautiful forest refuges in Maine, Vermont,
    New Hampshire, and New York, to continue our massive restoration of
    Florida's Everglades, to extend America's marine sanctuaries and restore
    coastal reefs.
        In addition, I will propose to add the highest level of wilderness
    protection to more than 5 million acres of back-country lands within
    Yellowstone, Glacier, Great Smoky Mountain, and other national parks. If
    Congress approves this request, then these places will never know the
    roar of bulldozers and chainsaws. They will never drown out the call of
    the wild. Families will still be free to enjoy the lands, but they

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    will be expected to take only photographs and leave only footprints.
        The second part of our plan, which works in tandem with the livable
    communities initiative the Vice President
    announced yesterday, represents a new vision of environmental
    stewardship for the new century. Today, it's no longer enough to
    preserve our grandest natural wonders. As communities keep growing and
    expanding, it's become every bit as important to preserve the small but
    sacred green and open spaces closer to home: woods and meadows and
    seashores where children can still play; streams where sports men and
    women can fish; agricultural lands where family farmers can produce the
    fresh harvest we often take for granted.
        In too many communities, farmland and open spaces are disappearing
    at a truly alarming rate. In fact, across this country, we lose about
    7,000 acres every single day. And as the lands become more scarce, it
    becomes harder and harder for communities to then afford the price of
    protecting the ones that are left. That's why we have to act now.
        So we will also dedicate nearly $600 million to helping communities
    across our country save the open spaces that greatly enhance our
    families' quality of life. With flexible grants, loans, and easements,
    we will help communities to save parks from being paved over. We'll help
    to save farms from being turned into strip malls. We'll help them to
    acquire new lands for urban and suburban forests and recreation sites.
    We'll help them set aside new wetlands, coastal, and wildlife preserves.
    There will be no green mandates and no redtape. Instead, the idea is to
    give communities all over our country the tools they need to make the
    most of their own possibilities.
        Let me just give you an example of what I mean. South Kingstown,
    Rhode Island, was a quiet farming town for more than two centuries.
    Today, it's the fastest growing community in the State. Its citizens
    welcome growth, but they want to maintain their parks and their open
    spaces. They want to make sure parents won't have to sit in traffic jams
    when they could be home reading to their children. They want to remain
    the kind of livable town where employers have no trouble recruiting
    educated workers interested in a high quality of life. So South
    Kingstown is setting aside one of every 5 acres as green space. They're
    revitalizing the historic downtown by creating a greenway along the
    Saugatucket River so people can stroll and bike right through the heart
    of town. And in November voters overwhelmingly approved a million-dollar
    bond measure to protect more farms and more open spaces.
        This is the work we will help them to complete and the kind of work
    we will help people all over America to do. This is the kind of future-
    oriented community action all Americans, without regard to party or
    region, should be supporting, action that combines a vigorous commitment
    to economic prosperity with an equally vigorous commitment to
    conservation.
        Ever since Theodore Roosevelt launched our Nation on the course of
    conservation, pessimists have claimed that this would hurt the economy.
    They've been wrong for 100 years now, but they haven't given up. Time
    and again they have been wrong. Whether the issue was park land
    preservation, acid rain, deadly pesticides, polluted rivers, the ozone
    hole, or any number of other environmental issues all of you know very
    well, we have always found ways to improve our environment, protect the
    public health, and enshrine our public heritage and still continue to
    grow our economy.
        In fact, with the recent developments in technology and the looming
    problems of climate change, we now know that we will have a far more
    prosperous economy if we do the right things by the environment. And I
    hope that in the 21st century we will not have to fight that battle for
    another 100 years.
        With this historic lands legacy initiative and the farsighted
    livable communities plan the Vice President
    announced yesterday, we will use flexible, innovative means to protect
    our Nation's and our communities' natural heritage. We will help to
    create livable cities where both citizens and businesses want to put
    down roots. We will honor the core principle Theodore Roosevelt set out
    for us 100 years ago: to leave this magnificent country even a better
    land for our descendants than it is for us.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:15 p.m. at the National Arboretum. In
    his remarks, he referred to Jean Mason, president, Arboretum Civic
    Association, who introduced the President; Mayor Anthony A. Williams of
    Washington, DC; Thomas S. Elias, Director, National Arboretum; Theodore
    Roosevelt IV, member, board of directors, League of Conservation Voters,
    and great-grandson of

    [[Page 35]]

    President Theodore Roosevelt; former Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day
    founder; and George T. Frampton, Jr., Acting Chair, Council on
    Environmental Quality. The transcript released by the Office of the
    Press Secretary also included the remarks of Vice President Al Gore.