Wildlife Under Seige If Ultra-Conservatives Have Their Way In Neutering Government Authority, Who’s Going To Protect Fish And Wildlife?

If conservative congressman Don Young has his way, all Americans will get a chance to speak their peace on fish and wildlife issues.

Unless they’re environmentalists.

“We’re not going to listen to the Beltway bandits, as I call them, the Beltway environmental career persons,” said Young, R-Alaska, the new chairman of the House natural resources committee.

Oops. In case you didn’t notice, the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., no longer has a natural resources committee.

When Young surfed the Republican tide to the chairmanship, he changed the name to “the committee on resources.”

“Some Republicans have a problem with the word ‘natural,’ ” said Bill Arthur, northwest spokesman for the Sierra Club in Seattle.

Young said he intends to limit the influence of lobbyists for groups such as the National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club and National Audubon Society by not inviting them to testify at committee hearings.

He has suggested no such roadblocks to established Capitol Hill lobbyists for extractive resource industries.

The trend can be seen throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Lawmakers who campaigned on their desire to listen to the people now are slamming the doors on constituents they don’t want to hear.

In Boise, Idaho’s joint finance and appropriations committee recently scuttled the popular “Incredible Idaho” television program produced by the state Fish and Game Department.

The program is funded with $95,000 from sportsmen’s license fees - about 17 cents per license buyer per year. Since none of the funding is from taxpayers, wildlife advocates see the move not as a budget-balancing measure, but as an attempt to silence wildlife advocacy.

In House Bill 299, Idaho lawmakers plan to strip civil service protection from state agency information officers.

“How can we communicate effectively with the public if we have to worry about getting canned for anything a governor might not like?” said one Fish and Game spokesman who asked to remain anonymous.

In Olympia, regulatory reform has broad political backing from both Democrats and Republicans.

But the Republican-sponsored HB 1010 was written with sweeping restrictions on agencies charged with enforcing environmental laws. As written, the bill would require wildlife agents to give warnings instead of citations to poachers.

Rep. Steve Fuhrman, R-Kettle Falls, chairman of the house natural resources committee, said the restraints on wildlife enforcement probably wouldn’t be retained in the final bill.

So why were such broad restraints proposed in the first place?

“They’ve come in wanting to enact all their ideas in one shot without giving a thought to the consequences of what they’re doing,” said Ron Schultz, lobbyist for Washington Audubon chapters.

So-called “takings” legislation on state and national levels would open the floodgates for legal action against government, environmentalists say.

Generally, the measures would require government agencies to pay landowners when rules reduce property values.

In Washington, Initiative 164 would essentially prevent government from making decisions that decrease the value of private property without compensation to the landowner.

A similar initiative in Arizona was defeated by a margin of 60 to 40 percent last year.

“It’s the taxpayer’s worst nightmare,” said Elliot Marks, president of the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition. “But it’s a dream come true for lawyers.

“Basically, it gives someone who pollutes a river rights that supercede those of the person who wants to fish downstream.”

John Osborn, spokesman for the Inland Empire Public Lands Council, is particularly disturbed about proposals to curtail public oversight of salvage logging on national forests.

SB 391, introduced by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, allows any logger to petition the Forest Service to declare a forest health emergency.

“It opens the door to a flood of petitions and forces the Forest Service to consider them all,” said Deborah Sivas, attorney for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

“There’s no language in the bill that says the Forest Service must comply with existing forest standards. The bill allows the agency to skirt National Environmental Policy Act requirements. It would put great pressure on local forest officials to log specific sites. Yet in so-called emergency actions, the public would have little chance to appeal.”

The bill would allow road building and logging of burned or diseased timber, but does not give adequate consideration for subsequent impacts to fish and wildlife, Osborn said.

“I guess Craig is fulfilling his promise to get government out of our lives by eliminating our rights to be involved in government decisions,” Osborn said.

Arthur said the Sierra Club doesn’t blame all Republicans for the apparent war on the environment.

“I don’t see Newt Gingrich as a player in all this craziness,” Arthur said. “But the Republican vote that swept the country also brought in a few Don Youngs who are packing vendettas.

“I think the leadership is already wondering at what point this stuff will get so weird that it puts the Republican majority at risk.

“The polls tell us Americans favor trimming the fat out of government,” Arthur said. “But the polls also tell us they’re not willing to gut the environment.”