Molly Ivins September 6

AUSTIN, Texas — It just gets stranger and stranger in our nation's capital. The chairman of the House Resources Committee — Rep. Don Young, Republican of Alaska — wants the names of all employees of the Southwest region of the U.S. Forest Service who are members of or "have any contact with" environmental groups. Hello???

"Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Nature Conservancy?"

WHAT does the man think he is doing? This berserk, McCarthyite request that the Forest Service "name names" was apparently touched off by the Forest Service's settlement of a lawsuit brought by the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity and the Forest Guardians. As a result of the lawsuit, the Forest Service agreed to remove cattle from sensitive streamside habitats in 11 Arizona and New Mexico national forests.

Young also wants the names of Justice Department employees who might have spoken to members of the environmental groups. I suppose that this includes fellow travelers of environmentalists as well. Young says he is concerned that the Forest Service may have become "a captive agency."

What's truly insane is that Forest Service and Justice Department personnel had to talk to the environmental groups to get the lawsuit settled. How could they not have talked to them? And it would be pretty strange if people in the Forest Service didn't care about the environment; has Young considered starting files on anyone in the Forest Service who talks to a timber industry employee? The real captive agency here is the House Resource Committee, and it's been captured by big ranching, big timber and big mining. Oh, those campaign contributions.

Here's what you can buy yourself from the Republican Congress by judicious campaign financing:

— A rider that would forbid the Bureau of Land Management from reviewing current hard-rock mining regulations; the purpose is to delay long-overdue mining-law reform.

— A rider to prohibit funds from being used by the National Park Service to phase out commercial fishing in Glacier Bay National Park, the largest protected marine ecosystem on the Pacific coast.

— A rider to allow the BLM to reauthorize grazing permits without the environmental analysis required by law.

— A rider authorizing construction of a $30 million gravel road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge and Wilderness.

— A rider cutting off Forest Service funds for planning, which means consideration of recommendations now being developed by an independent committee of scientists will be cut off.

And more — much more.

Page after page of anti-environmental riders attached to one piece of legislation or another. Enviro groups are not even certain they know about all of them.

"Although both the House and Senate Interior bills contain attacks on the environment, by sheer volume of anti-environmental riders, the Senate Interior spending bill is the worse we've ever seen," said Roger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife.

And of course the piece de resistance: new oil drilling on the North Slope of Alaska, although Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt did draw the line at drilling in a coastal area he calls a "biological wonderland." William Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society, said: "This is a terribly shortsighted decision. This reserve should be drilled only in an emergency." Of course, oil supplies are now plentiful, and prices are low and falling, so it makes absolutely no sense to drill in the reserve now.

One of the consistent tragedies of the American West has been the poor quality of its representatives on environmental issues. Western senators are notorious for siding with timber companies, mining companies and ranchers. What's especially sad is that the economies of the Western states are now far more diversified and are not dependent on the exploitation of natural resources.

I've always felt that ranchers and enviros should be friends (like farmers and cowboys); ranching can be environmentally benign, and indeed there are signs of an emerging alliance between the groups here and there around the West. But Young and his ilk feed the paranoia that right-wing groups have been fomenting in the rural West, that somehow enviros are a subversive bunch out to take away a man's right to earn a living.

Anyone who is familiar with the West knows how fragile that arid environment is — and how irreparable the damage caused by greedy exploitation. The landscape is pocked with tragic reminders of the consequences of greed and stupidity. Since all of us own much of the West, we have a real stake in seeing to it that multiple-use arrangements on public lands really are fair to all sides — including the land itself.

Upton Sinclair once observed, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." But the economic consequences of environmental stupidity are all around us. If we overfish the oceans, there will no fish left for anyone; if we overcut the forests, there will be nothing left for the future; if we permit arid land to be overgrazed, it will never come back. Unemployed fishermen and foresters and cowboys make very good environmentalists — but sometimes a little late.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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