Interior appropriations
a venue for
environmental debates

How did the Colorado representatives vote?

By Vera Smith

Late July of 2003 was a busy time on Capitol Hill. At stake was a series of amendments to the Interior Appropriations Bill designed to head off damage to America’s National Parks, Forests, Wildlife Refuges, and other protected places.

While the conservation community did not prevail on the amendments we supported, we achieved something quite remarkable all the same: We served loud notice that Americans care about their public lands, and so does a large and bipartisan conservation contingent in the Congress. We also made clear that assaults on our public lands won’t go unchallenged in Congress.

As a reader of Wild Colorado, you are aware of the unprecedented attacks against our natural resources and wild places under the care of the four public land agencies (the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service). Among these attacks have been the rollbacks of protections of proposed wilderness lands; the secret agreements that give counties and states the right to build thousands of miles of new highways into our parks, forests, refuges, and monuments; the rescission of the snowmobile ban in Yellowstone National Park; the severe weakening of regulations governing National Forest management; and the defunding of critical land and wildlife protection efforts.

The agencies made some of these decisions in secret with no public participation. In making others, they ignored clear, consistent public sentiment. Faced with an administration with an anti-conservation perspective, legislators have no other option than to try to halt damaging initiatives through amendments to funding measures. Below are the results of several conservation-related amendments offered to the Interior Appropriations bill, which sets spending levels for our public lands management agencies.

Issue #1. Oh, so closeÑ
snowmobiles in Yellowstone

The appropriations amendment would have directed the Park Service to replace snowmobiles with snow coaches as it originally planned to do in response to a huge public outpouring. Reps. Rush Holt (D-NJ), Christopher Shays (R-CT), Nick Rahall (D-WV) and Timothy Johnson (R-IL) actually achieved a tie on this amendment, 210 to 210. At one point with seconds left in the allotted voting time, these conservationists were actually ahead in the voting 211Ð209, but House leaders kept the vote open until they pressured one unidentified Member into changing his or her vote from “Yes” to “No.” Under House rules, a tie is the same as a loss; we had to win to succeed. So that one last-minute flip-flop made all the difference.

Issue #2. Revised Statute 2477Ñ
Paving paradise

Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) sponsored an amendment to halt the processing of RS 2477 claims. Under this Civil WarÐera loophole, states and counties with the Department of Interior’s assistance are trying to claim non-existent highways over public lands. The Udall amendment gained such strong bipartisan support that the opposition admitted defeat a couple of days before the vote and offered their own amendment, sponsored by Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC). Although the Taylor amendment (which eventually passed) would protect only one-third of public lands, leaving most of Colorado’s Vermillion Basin, Utah’s Red Rock wilderness, and other special places at risk, the fact that they felt compelled to offer it at all clearly demonstrated that even anti-wilderness members of Congress understood that the administration’s proposal had gone too far.

Issue #3. Roadless area conservation rule

Over five-and-a-half million acres in Colorado and about fifty-eight million acres nationwide of pristine landscapes in our national forests have been specially protected since 1996 by the so-called “Roadless Rule” that prohibits commercial logging and road building in these unspoiled places. The administration has now announced it will reopen Alaska’s virgin forests to logging, excluding from protection roadless areas in our two largest national forests, the Tongass and Chugach. The administration has also offered western governors the opportunity to reject Roadless Rule protections for national forests in their states.

An amendment offered by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) would have prevented the Forest Service from spending any money to implement its plan. After an impassioned debate, the amendment failed by a vote of 234 to 185.

Issue #4. The Conservation Trust Fund

Over the past forty years, key conservation programs such as the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) have provided the money to protect wildlife, provide hiking and other outdoor recreation opportunities across the country, and to preserve such crown jewels as Everglades National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and the Appalachian Trail. Just three years ago, in 2000, Congress created a new funding mechanism called the Conservation Trust Fund to make sure that America would always reserve enough money to address its most pressing conservation, wildlife, and recreation needs.

The Appropriations Committee proposed this year to slash the trust fund by over $500 million. Cuts of that magnitude would constrain the ability of states and communities to protect valuable wildlife habitat and open space as well as build recreational developments.

An amendment, offered by Rep. David Obey (D-WI), sought to restore the Conservation Trust Fund to its promised level of $1.56 billion, adding $570 million for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, Forest Legacy and other priority conservation, wildlife, and recreation activities. The amendment was kept from the floor on a technicality by a vote of 199Ð219.

Issue #5. Upholding sound
forest management.

The process set up by the National Forest Management Act, or NFMA, ensures that the public has a voice in National Forest planning. The administration is seeking to re-work large portions of forest law in order to reduce greatly public participation, scientific input, and objective analysis of environmental impacts in management of our national forests. If successful, this rollback will degrade forests and harm wildlife across our nation, and squelch private citizens’ ability to influence plans for forests in their own backyards.

The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Tom Udall (D-NM), would have prevented the Forest Service from spending any money to gut the existing forest protections provided by the National Forest Management Act. It failed by a vote of 198 to 222.

ScorecardÑVotes on public lands amendments
to the Interior Appropriations Bill by Colorado lawmakers

Cong. District	Party	Representative	Issue 1 Vote 385	Issue 2 Vote 388	Issue 3 Vote 386	Issue 4 Vote 371	Issue 5 Vote 384
CO01	D	Degette	Y	N	Y	N	Y
CO02	D	Udall, Mark	Y	N	Y	N	Y
CO03	R	McInnis	N	Y	N	Y	N
CO04	R	Musgrave	N	Y	N	Y	N
CO05	R	Hefley	N	Y	N	Y	N
CO06	R	Tancredo	N	Y	N	Y	N
CO07	R	Beauprez	N	Y	N	Y	N
How we thought they should have votedÉ			Y	N	Y	N	Y

Thank you to all the CMC members who called their representatives in response to our alerts. If you are interested in receiving alerts from our Conservation Department, please email Vera Smith at smithv@cmc.org and ask to be enrolled on the Alert List. P