Ecosystem Project Ties Up Budget

In the towering forest of the federal budget, it’s at best a small shrub. At worst, it’s a weed that just won’t go away.

The Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project - its name more daunting than the federal dollars it receives - has managed to delay approval of the entire Interior Department budget.

The much-maligned, ever-scrutinized project is a comprehensive study of the trees, streams, animals, people and property in seven western states, spanning parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada.

Its aim is to develop a single ecosystem management effort for an area that currently has 70 different plans.

But as its detractors repeat daily in Congress, a lot of people are wondering what this program is all about.

“The government has spent $24.8 million to study 144 million acres, the size of Texas … and the public doesn’t know what’s happening,” said Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Spokane.

Nethercutt and his House colleagues want to chop the project’s budget from $6.7 million to $600,000 and require researchers to report everything they’ve learned.

Their Senate counterparts are more permissive. The senior chamber, led by Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., wants to allot the project about $4 million - a large cut, but enough to continue its work.

The dispute concerns a mere 0.03 percent of the $12 billion Interior Department appropriations bill. Yet it is the only item that remains unresolved by a team of House and Senate negotiators.

The conferees struck agreements Tuesday on cuts to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Endowment for the Arts and Bureau of Mines. But the 2-year-old ecosystem study is a bit more complicated.

The project, commissioned Jan. 1, 1994, was supposed to be done in a year. That deadline later was stretched to this fall.

Now the team of 250 scientists, specialists and technocrats is aiming its primary report for January 1996, with follow-ups to continue for the next couple of years.

That’s only if the budget remains unchanged.

Should the Senate side prevail, “We would have to redefine what we do and push our timeline back further,” Quigley said.

And should the House side win, “We would publish what we have at this point in time and disperse the team,” he said.

, DataTimes