Liberty
Matters News Service
June 30, 2004
Everybody Loses
The House Resource Committee staff is working on
legislation that would make permanent Rep. Ralph Regula's (R-OH) 1996 "Fee
Demo" bill. HR 3283, "America the Beautiful," would require Americans to
purchase an $85 pass before they can access any part of public lands that they
already support with tax dollars. All public lands would be affected including
Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, all Forest Service lands and
lakes and U. S Fish and Wildlife managed national refuge areas. Additional fees
would be required for campgrounds and boat launches and special recreation
permit fees for motorized recreation and for group activities. HR 3283 would
scrap the Golden Age Pass that allows senior citizens lifetime access to the
national parks for a one-time fee of $10. If one is caught on federal land
without a pass he could end up in jail for six months and be fined $5,000.
There is more than one way to keep the public lands free from human invasion.
Rep. Scott McInnis (R-CO) has introduced legislation to "fully fund" the
federal government's Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program that is supposed
to ease the financial burden incurred by local governments when the feds take
land off tax rolls. The federal government currently reimburses states less
than $1 per acre for lost revenue. Rep. McInnis is missing the point, however.
It is not up to taxpayers to support the government's land grab program. The
federal government has already demonstrated it cannot take care of the land it
controls, hence the public lands fee bill, and it certainly has no business
acquiring more to the detriment of local governments.
Bill Aims
to Increase Feds' Property Taxes
Environmentalists Blame Bush for Babbitt Policy
The National Wildlife
Federation (NWF) blames the Bush administration for trying to gut the
Endangered Species Act by drastically reducing critical habitat designation.
The group claims that only one of every two acres recommended as critical
habitat are being approved. The government eliminated 42 million acres of the
82 million acres of proposed critical habitat between 2001 and 2003 because the
designations were too costly and did little to enhance species recovery. The
move to reduce critical habitat did not originate with the Bush administration
as NWF would have everyone believe, but was started during the Clinton/Babbitt
years. As early as 1997, funding for critical habitat was capped at the request
of the Department of Interior. John Kostyack, senior attorney for NWF, charged
the administration regularly deletes analyses showing the economic benefits of
protecting species and that protecting spotted owl habitat would benefit
individual [Colorado] households by $50 to $120 in terms of clean water and
recreation, however, he never talks about the billions of lost dollars to those
families who lost their livelihoods because of faulty spotted owl science.
Critical-Habitat Benefits Distorted, Group
Claims
Useful Idiots
Forest Guardians, a Santa Fe,
New Mexico environmental group, is launching a program to recruit volunteers to
record, by digital camera, damage caused to streambeds by grazing cattle. The
volunteers will be taught to monitor streams and complete field surveys and the
information will then be fed into the Guardian's database. "This archive will
help to show how cattle and other factors are harming our streams and will help
in restoring animals such as beaver to our watersheds," said Billy Stern,
Guardian's grazing coordinator. Watershed Guardians (WG), a division of Forest
Guardians, believes the images could change the Forest Service's national
forest grazing policy, and with the help of a good photo-editing program they
could certainly come up with pictures of devastated streambeds. Stern said that
"cows tend to stay in the riparian areas where they can reduce the vitality of
the plants and trees, [and] affect stream banks and hydrology…" Forest
Guardians is notorious for numerous lawsuits against government agencies and
apparently WG intends to influence judges with their digital camera evidence.
"Usually we are only successful when they [the agencies] have done their own
monitoring, found problems and not done anything to fix them," Stern said. "But
in a situation where there isn't any federal monitoring, the courts will look
at citizens' monitoring - and providing such monitoring is one goal of
Watershed Guardians."
Group
Seeks Hikers to Document Waterways
Sage Grouse Listing Threatens Energy Exploration
Interior Secretary Norton admits if the sage
grouse is listed as endangered, the future of oil and gas exploration could be
endangered too. Norton told attendees of the Western Governors Conference:
"Some say the grouse could become the spotted owl of the intermountain West,"
and advised energy companies to adopt strict management techniques to avoid
negatively impacting grouse habitat. Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, who has
previously shown good common sense in environmental matters, joined New Mexico
Governor Bill Richardson in calling for a temporary freeze on new well leases
until impacts on the grouse can be thoroughly studied. One opponent of the boom
in Wyoming drilling, Linda Baker, says "This is a robbery of national
proportions," and believes the bird's only hope is federal protection. A
Pinedale, Wyoming native, Laurel Bing disagrees. "The benefit of energy
development has been great and very positive," she said. Incidentally, a study
released by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies shows a
gradual increase in sage grouse populations in recent years.
Sage Grouse Listing Would
Hurt Energy Production