Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Protecting our heritage

Sunday, June 11, 2000 | 9:53 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

LAST WEEK in Boise, Idaho, seven past and present Western state governors discussed how the next administration in Washington, D.C., should manage public lands. I was invited by former Idaho governor and Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus, who now runs the Andrus Center for Public Policy. He told us to leave partisan politics at the door, and seek solutions and give recommendations.

What did we agree upon? The need for flexibility in the federal programs designed to protect public lands was acceptable. I'm sure that some participants had different reasons for the need of this flexibility. An example I was thinking about would be an edict from the banks of the Potomac denying the use of snowmobiles on all public lands or just all forest lands. No, I'm not a snowmobiler, but I do have some friends who love those contraptions. There are several areas where they should be allowed to enjoy their sport and there are other areas where they should be restricted. A blanket policy shouldn't ban their use, nor should they be allowed to damage fragile watersheds or meadows. Local input by land users and conservationists would be invaluable.

Toward the end of the seminar there appeared to be agreement that all major conservation agencies should be in one federal department. This would remove the U.S. Forest Service from the Department of Agriculture and place it with the Department of Interior's National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and Bureau of Reclamation. This suggestion isn't new and has some merit if the reorganized department would use the direct line of authority that has worked so efficiently for the Forest Service.

Also, not discussed, is the possible fate of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. In past discussions, at a different time and place, it has been suggested that BIA be administered from an agency concerned with human resources rather than natural resources.

The person sworn in as president next year can have all of the best intentions in the world of creating a land policy that will make everybody happy here in the West. If he honestly believes this, then he's too naive to sit in the Oval Office. There is no such animal that will fulfill the desires of the millions of people who use the vast lands of this region. When all is said and done there can be no single policy that will meet the needs and demands of each group and every state. There can only be a broad policy which must be flexible enough to be acceptable to many users and at the same time protect the environment that has made the West a special place to live and raise families. Without the protection of our lands we can easily become just an extension of the places millions have fled to take up residency in our states.

The secretary of interior and the secretary of agriculture must love the land which he or she is supposed to oversee. The land and land users must be uppermost in their minds when making decisions. They aren't heading up commerce, defense, education, treasury or education. They, and the people they supervise, must be dedicated to the protection and proper use of our public lands as their first responsibility. Anything less is unacceptable to the people of the West and the tenure of a person without this dedication will soon be shorter than that of the president who appointed him.

The best example of self-destruction was President Ronald Reagan's appointee, James Watt, as secretary of the interior in 1981. Before the year was over I addressed the 46th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Washington, D.C. During that speech, also attended by Watt, I called him a "hired gun for business interests fighting to open federal lands for their own interests."

Watt's boss, President Reagan, who viewed himself as a "Sagebrush Rebel," stuck with him and even used his best friend, Nevada's Sen. Paul Laxalt, to defend the secretary. Eventually it became obvious that Watt was going to be too heavy a load during Reagan's successful campaign to stay in the White House for another four years.

The Republican National Committee chairman, Nevadan Frank Fahrenkopf, saw Watt as a campaign liability. Nevada Supreme Court Justice Cliff Young, then president of the National Wildlife Federation, called for Watt's firing. So did several other GOP conservation leaders, including Nathaniel Reed, an assistant secretary of interior for both Presidents Nixon and Ford. Even President Carter's interior secretary, Andrus, told NBC that Watt was "carrying out the Reagan mandate" and it was going to "backlash against the industries he's trying to help." Andrus had placed Watt on the White House doorstep and Reagan, rather than bring him in from the cold, sent him home to Colorado prior to the 1984 campaign.