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TODAY Friday 20 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Friday 20 June 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Dude Wilderness
Few things irritate a Western Republican more than the spectacle of Eastern Republicans and Democrats from anywhere voting to designate as wilderness some portion of Western land that might otherwise be mined, logged, or developed as a world-class ski resort. It is even worse when the outsiders vote to re-introduce wild predators -- wolves, grizzlies -- into federal territories that abut private farms and ranches. What does it say about democracy, they ask, if the elected representatives of a sovereign state are steamrollered on vital questions played out exclusively within the borders of that state?
They have a point. If you were to conduct plebiscites in Idaho and Utah about the desirability of more federal wilderness designations, the results would not hearten conservationists. This may not alter one's basic politics on the question -- we're talking about federal land, after all, under the appropriate control of federal law -- but anyone who has mouthed off over the years about the value of decentralization has to feel just slightly uneasy.
Two months ago, when the Sagebrush Rebels were beginning their campaign against the reintroduce-the-grizzlies program, Easterners who supported the program were asked how they would like to have the big bears dropped closer to home, in Central Park, say ("Grizzlies off Battery Park"). We liked the Central Park bear-drop, just as we support the Eastern Wilderness bill introduced earlier this week by disgruntled Westerners.
The bill would compel the federal government to inventory any parcel of land east of the 100th meridian, private as well as public, that is larger than 500 acres and that might be suitable for wilderness designation. Current law restricts wilderness areas to public parcels larger than 5,000 acres. The effect of the law, say the Westerners, is to ensure that wilderness is restricted to land west of the Great Plains. As Congressman Bob Smith of Oregon says, "I have watched and sat and listened to Easterners trump up Western wilderness programs until I am sick of it, frankly. If it's good policy for the West, it must be good policy for the East."
All right. If the federal government is willing to pay for new wilderness areas in the East, why not? From an ecosystem point of view, it's hard to justify a parcel as small as 500 acres (though some estuaries can pack in a lot of biodiversity in a relatively small area), but on aesthetic, recreational, even spiritual grounds, a system of smallish zones where absolutely no development could occur would be a wonderful public work. The sticking point, of course, is that most of the new wildernesses would have to be carved from private holdings.
Ideologically, the Western Republicans would agree that private landowners must be justly compensated if their property were to be converted to public wilderness. Fiscally, though, they would probably be loathe to vote for the necessary appropriations. The alternative, of course, is outright confiscation along Bolshevik lines.
Personally, I like the idea of Bob Smith, Helen Chenoweth, and other New-World-Order-haters leading the charge to wrest from private hands some prime Northeast territory that could be allowed to return to its state of natural forest. I have some college campuses in mind.
TODAY ON THE SITE
Susan Alexander knows all about wilderness and wilderness politics. Check out her High Fives feature to find out about the five best Websites to learn more.
This week's "Today" columns:
6/19: Stormy Weather
6/18: Nostalgia
6/17: Air War
6/16: Pray for Swelter
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