Big Business Trying To Loot Public Lands

Each week, outdoor experts in this area share their insights.

The Inland Empire Bass Club might have a program on top-water casting techniques. The Inland Northwest Wildlife Council holds seminars ranging from calling ducks and geese to building bluebird boxes.

On Tuesday, however, I chose to to hear Edwin G. Davis deliver his pitch for Referendum 48, the so-called “takings” or “property rights” law that Washington citizens will decide on Nov. 7. Davis was speaking to the Fourth District Republican Action Club at the Valley Library.

I went to listen because R-48 - and the movement behind it - have the potential to impact every outdoor pursuit Northwesterners have come to appreciate.

Passage would pave the way for draining wetlands critical to fish, waterfowl and the quality of water we drink.

Clear water or brown? That is the question.

Local governments in particular would be paralyzed from enforcing regulations necessary to ensure our quality of life.

But that’s just the beginning. R-48 is part of a national movement to loot this country’s public lands and natural resources.

One man asked if R-48’s ambiguous legal requirements might make it cost-prohibitive to enact or enforce land-use regulations.

“That’s not the intent, but it may be the outcome,” said Davis, in what was perhaps the only significant answer of the presentation.

Several action club members gasped when he divulged that the National Audubon Society donated $10,000 to promote defeat of R-48.

“You should know who’s opposing this measure,” he said.

But, curiously, no one at the public meeting asked Davis who was supporting the measure. No mention of $105,600 from the Building Industry Association of Washington, $39,000 from Simpson Timber Co., $33,000 from Plum Creek Timber or $27,000 from Boise Cascade.

I don’t mean to pick on Davis, even though he’s a local ultra-right-wing propagandist for the corporate ideals of chewing up the country’s land, water and wildlife - and spitting them out. He’s just one snorting bull in a stampede of environmental terrorists charging across this land.

Most of this anti-environmental sentiment has surfed into Washington on a wave of corporate cash.

The National Association of Home Builders, for example, doled out $3.7 million in the past five years to congressional candidates. The association is just one of many “brown” political action groups adamantly opposed to wetlands protection.

Sen. Slade Gorton drew up his Endangered Species Act reform behind closed doors with timber industry representatives. Average citizens didn’t have the dough to buy their way in.

With all the Republicans’ talk of making government balance the books and pay its way, they’ve never drummed up the guts to demand fair market fees for grass on public range lands. The $9.5 million budget of the National Cattlemen’s Association helps explain why. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., listened to wealthy ranchers and corporations co-sponsoring the Hanson-Thomas BLM Divestiture Act, which would allow each state to take control of all federal Bureau of Land Management land within its borders.

After hearing the uproar of the “people” back home who realized this was a sure step toward selling public lands to private interests, Burns told the Billings Gazette he probably wouldn’t vote for his own bill.

The most insidious and damaging of the ultra-right tactics is using budget bills to dismantle environmental laws.

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, has tagged the House budget reconciliation bill with an item that would allow oil drilling in the the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

A recent Time-CNN poll found that two-thirds of the public opposes ANWR drilling, but cash talks louder on Capitol Hill. Senators who support ANWR development have received an average of $77,929 from pro-drilling political action groups, while those voting to prohibit drilling received $18,356, according to a study by the Environmental Working Group.

Our own Rep. George Nethercutt is using the appropriations bill to prohibit scientific assessments of fisheries that might affect development in the Columbia River Drainage.

A friend recently sighed at the news. “Maybe it will take something greater than the demise of Northwest salmon to get his attention about the need for environmental protection,” he said.

How could that be?

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review