On September 11, 1997, President Clinton defied the Constitution, the United States Congress and the American people by issuing an Executive Order creating the American Heritage Rivers Program (AHRI). Twelve federal agencies, including the Dept. of Defense and the U.S. Attorney General’s office, are preparing to move into any community foolish enough to "ask" for designation. This program has nothing to do with the preservation of river towns. It is about the federal government imposing their will into local affairs. Last Thursday, Senator Hutchinson (R-AR), offered an amendment to the Appropriations Bill that would have required the federal government to notify any landowner affected by an AHRI designation. The measure failed 57-42. On Wednesday, September 24th, there will be a hearing for Congressman Chenoweth’s H.R. 1842. She needs co-sponsors on this bill. Call your Congressman today! Also, for a sample letter you can send your Congressman to request that no river in your Congressman’s district be designated, order doc. # 183. This may be the only way you can protect your back yard. Senate vote on Hutchinson Amendment, Faxback Doc. # 180. Executive Order, Faxback Docs. 176, 177.

Last week, Senators Kempthorne (R-ID), Reid (D-NV), Baucus (D-MT) and Chafee (R-RI), filed S.1180, the Endangered Species Reform Act. Kempthorne describes this bill as a bi-partisan effort to protect property rights and save species, but the bill falls way short of its stated goal. Kempthorne’s idea of property rights protection is giving landowners incentives like deferred taxes and other similar options, but not compensation for the loss of the use of their property. Once a landowner enters into one of these incentive contracts they jeopardize their ability to use the one remedy they have to protect their property rights, just compensation under the fifth amendment, because they have now become a willing party to the regulatory action. Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt, who has worked tirelessly to extinguish property rights through environmental regulations, supports Kempthorne’s bill. S.1180 is scheduled for a hearing September 23rd, mark-up for September 30th and is expected to hit the Senate floor as early as the week of October 13th. If passed, this bill will simply re-authorize current law with minor changes destroying more property rights, species and liberties. Call your Senators today and tell them if saving species is a worthy goal, then there should be a right way to do that — that is by respecting constitutional principles and our property rights. Make your calls today! For a copy of S.1180, order Faxback doc. # 178 (27pp) and doc # 179 (CEI press release).

Congressman Bob Smith from Oregon has introduced a "light" grazing bill in order to incrementally address environmentalists and ranchers concerns. Smith filed the "Forage Improvement Act" (H.R. 2493) last week with 28 co-sponsors, missing the support of four key western states. Over the past month, critics of the draft bill pointed out major problems with the language that would extinguish the ranchers property rights interests. Two key cases, PLC v. Babbitt and Hage v. United States have already won major property rights protections, which the bill as filed now jeopardizes. In his press release, Smith stated, "That the bill gets some criticism from the extreme ends of the political spectrum probably indicates that we drafted a very reasonable, mainstream bill." We do not need mainstream reform, we need the protection of our constitutionally guaranteed property rights. Faxback doc. # 181 (7pp) for HR 2493, doc # 182 for analysis.

Starting October 1, 1997 the National Park Service (NPS) will banish all motorized watercraft from the nation’s 32 National Parks. The Park Service insisted that the ban was only temporary, but conceded that the "consensus" is that motorized craft "are not appropriate" in park areas. The next move will most likely be to exclude all human use of these waterways, etc. etc.... the Wildlands Project marches on.

This Week on NET, Liberty Matters will discuss the Kempthorne ESA "Reform" Bill and Endangered Species issues in general. Tune in to Morning View at 8:45 A.M. Eastern Time Friday.