Westerners Fight Back Over Land State Lawmakers Lobby To Ease Species Act, Timber Policies

Dozens of Western state lawmakers urged Congress on Monday to relax U.S. environmental regulations, beef up protection of private property rights and turn over hundreds of millions of acres of federal land to the states.

“Federal policies are creating rural ghettos,” said Melvin Brown, Republican speaker of the Utah House of Representatives.

Legislators and county commissioners representing 12 Western states gathered as members of the Western States Coalition to begin a week of meetings with their representatives in Congress.

“At the turn of the last century, the end of the gold rush created ghost towns,” said Gail Phillips, Republican speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives. “Now we are seeing the same things across the West in timber towns and other mining towns.”

Rob Bishop, co-founder of the coalition, said it boasts more than 3,000 members representing 22 million people in the West.

He said it is a bipartisan group, although the politicians speaking at a news conference were Republicans and much of the criticism was directed at the Clinton administration.

Mark Killian, co-chairman of the coalition and speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, said the organization was formed “out of the frustration with the policies of (Interior Secretary) Bruce Babbitt and the Clinton administration.

“Mr. Babbitt needs to come back to Arizona and visit his roots and talk to the people,” he said about the former Democratic governor.

The coalition unveiled a list of “12 Steps to Revive the West,” including replacing the Endangered Species Act “with a law that balances human and economic needs with needs of plants and animals.”