[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 50 (Monday, December 20, 1999)]
[Pages 2617-2618]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the Lands Legacy Initiative

December 14, 1999

    Thank you very much. Secretary Babbitt and George Frampton and all 
the members of our administration are glad to welcome the environmental 
leaders who are here today.
    At the dawn of this century, Theodore Roosevelt defined America's 
great central task as ``leaving this land even a better land for our 
descendants than it is for us.'' This is the vision of environmental 
stewardship that has inspired our lands legacy initiative, the historic 
plan I unveiled earlier this year to protect America's threatened green 
and open spaces.
    Two weeks ago I had the great honor of signing into law the funding 
for this lands legacy initiative. Although much of the news of that day 
concentrated on budget victories for education and public safety, it was 
also a remarkable day for the environment. With one stroke of the pen, 
we made it possible to add hundreds of thousands of acres to our 
children's endowment of natural wonders, places like New Mexico's Baca 
Ranch, home to one of North America's largest herds of wild elk.
    Today, I will be sending to Congress a list of 18 additional natural 
and historic sites we propose to protect with new lands legacy funding. 
Our list includes sections of Hawaii's Hakalau Forest, which supports 
hundreds of species of rare plants and birds. It includes critical 
habitat on Florida's Pelican Island, where Theodore Roosevelt 
established the Nation's very first wildlife preserve. It includes the 
birth home and burial place of Martin Luther King, Jr.
    We now have funding to protect all these places. We have willing 
sellers, and we look forward to speedy review by the appropriate 
committees in Congress.
    I'm also pleased to report on the status of yet another effort to 
protect the lands we hold sacred. A year ago I asked Secretary Babbitt 
to report to me on unique and fragile places that deserve to be 
protected as national monuments. This morning, Secretary Babbitt 
presented me with his recommendation that I use my executive authority 
to create three new national monuments in Arizona and California and to 
significantly expand another in California. Each of the sites already 
belongs to the American people, and no land purchases would be required. 
But giving these lands national monument status would ensure they will 
be passed along to future generations, healthy and whole.
    The first of the proposed new monuments is located on the northern 
rim of the Grand Canyon, and it consists of stunning canyons and lonely 
buttes shaped by the hand of God over millions of years. The second, a 
desert region in the shadow of rapidly expanding Phoenix, is an 
archaeological treasure trove containing some of the most extraordinary 
prehistoric ruins and petroglyphs in the American Southwest. The third, 
off the coast of California, would encompass thousands of small islands 
and reefs that serve as essential habitat for sea otters and sea birds 
forced from the shore by extensive development. Finally, this proposal 
calls for expanding California's Pinnacles National Monument, the site 
of the spectacular volcanic spires and mountain caves.
    Secretary Babbitt's recommendations come as a result of careful 
analysis and extensive discussions with local citizen, State and local 
officials, and with Members of Congress. And I will take them very 
seriously. I expect to make a decision on the sites early next year.
    Like Theodore Roosevelt, I believe there are certain places 
humankind simply cannot improve upon, places whose beauty and interest 
no photograph could capture, places you simply have to see for yourself. 
We must use this time of unparalleled prosperity to ensure people will 
always be able to see these places as we see them today.
    There is no greater gift we can offer to the new millennium than to 
protect these treasures for all Americans for all time.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 11:52 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the 
White House.

[[Page 2618]]