Editorial: Dismantling the environment

Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006 | 11:27 a.m.

In its continuing war on the environment, the Bush administration's land management agencies are preventing federal wildlife biologists from studying wildlife and are proposing to sell off national forest parcels to whittle down budget deficits.

According to The Washington Post, Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologists in the agency's office in Pinedale, Wyo. - an area called the "Serengeti of the West" because of its large deer and antelope herds - are directed to spend their time processing natural gas drilling permits, rather than studying drilling's effects on wildlife.

The region's sage grouse population has dropped 51 percent, and the mule deer population has dropped 46 percent since drilling increased five years ago. The Bush administration hopes to increase drilling in the area six-fold over the next decade, the Post reports.

Steve Belinda, a wildlife biologist for the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service for 16 years, quit last week because he was spending "less than 1 percent" of his time studying wildlife, as he is trained - and presumably was hired - to do. "They are telling us that 'if it is not energy-related, you are not working on it,' " Belinda told the Post.

He is not a lone dissenter. Other BLM officials and two of the agency's own studies say about a third of the money designated for wildlife study has been spent on other projects, resulting in "numerous lost opportunities" to protect wildlife.

Meanwhile, Forest Service officials are proposing to sell up to 300,000 acres of federal forests nationwide - including 2,100 acres in northern areas of Nevada's Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest - to raise $800 million to try to make a dent in budget deficits. A Bush administration official said the money would aid a program that supports rural schools and roads, which needs new funding to continue beyond next year.

Critics say selling the Nevada parcels will severely limit public access to the Carson Range. Selling off the public's land is popular with Bush and his supporters, as illustrated by the administration's failed attempt last year to siphon money from the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act and a Republican House bill that proposes selling the West's public land to help pay for hurricane relief.

With a proposed budget that seeks to slash funding for water and land conservation grants, the Environmental Protection Agency's record-keeping and the ailing National Park Service, news that the Bush administration is hobbling its wildlife biologists and proposing to sell off our forests is not a surprise. It is simply another volley in this president's war on nature.