Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Learning from the past

Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2001 | 8:41 a.m.

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

DO YOU REMEMBER the failed "Sagebrush Rebellion" that started and ended in Nevada? It all started out as an attempt to have all federal land in the Silver State turned over to the state. Eventually it evolved into a bill that would have the federal government putting all of the land up for sale. It didn't take long for the ranchers to realize that large corporate cattle, mining and other business operations would gobble up the land on which they had their own cattle grazing for a nominal fee.

That this would happen was clear to many Nevadans, but still large sums of state dollars were expended by politicians and ranchers. They were encouraged by Interior Secretary James Watt, who eventually was recognized as a total failure during his time in office. He only held on as long as he did because his boss, President Ronald Reagan, was all for the privatization of public lands. Both men had forgotten the Republican heritage of conservation practices of President Teddy Roosevelt and some other Republican presidents.

One Nevada Republican who knew the importance of protecting our natural resources was state Sen. Cliff Young. Today Young is a senior member of the Nevada Supreme Court. Young saw the rebellion for the nonsense it was and, having prior experience as a member of Congress and also heading up a national wildlife organization, made his thoughts known. One Sunday I had the pleasure of appearing with him on a national television news show when discussing the rebellion's shortcomings.

In California, a former assistant interior secretary, Nathaniel Pryor Reed, told of his pride in what had been accomplished by Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford. Six months after Reagan had appointed Watt, Reed told the Sierra Club:

"Some of you may recall that Watt headed one of the bureaus for which I had responsibility when I was at Interior -- the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation. Nobody likes to complain about an old colleague. And, in fact, I sent Jim Watt a mailgram expressing my congratulations and offering my assistance when his nomination was announced.

"I had hopes that he would rise above his narrow advocate's role as director of the Mountain States Legal Foundation. I had hopes that he would develop into a statesman Secretary of the Interior, in the tradition of Stew Udall and Rog Morton and Stan Hathaway and Tom Kleppe and Cece Andrus.

"But two of Watt's actions have convinced me that he is already a disaster as Secretary. One of these is his butchery of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. ... The other is the talk that he delivered to the Conference of National Park Concessioners on March 9 of this year -- surely one of the most fawning, disgusting performances ever given by a Secretary of the Interior. He was so eager to please that he all but gave away the Park system."

Twenty years later we have conservationists and lovers of the outdoors and wildlife expressing the hope that newly appointed Secretary of Interior Gale Norton will rise above what she learned and practiced as a protege of James Watt.

Norton's mentor was, for a couple of years, a big Republican fund-raiser but was a disaster as an officeholder. During one GOP fund-raiser in Las Vegas he was blessed with Nevada U.S. Sen. Paul Laxalt calling him "one of the stars of the Reagan Administration." At the same time, state Sen. Cliff Young was saying Reagan should fire Watt.

A recent story by Gannett News Service tells of some former Sagebrush Rebels seeing Norton as the key to undoing the environmental actions of President Bill Clinton and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. Conservationists, on the other hand, hope that Norton is wiser than Watt and rises above the mess he made for the nation.