Time for the GOP to steal back its conservation legacy
by REP President Martha Marks
published in the Miami Herald and other Knight-Ridder newspapers around the country in Spring 2000
Quick: Who opposed Teddy Roosevelt's push to set aside over 100 million acres of national forest and create five national parks?
Chances are you don't know, and that's my point. Teddy’s face is on Mount Rushmore; his detractors are forgotten.
That's a lesson the GOP would do well to consider, especially in this election season. T.R.--one of our greatest Republican presidents--left us a great conservation legacy. Like many other Republican ideas, however, his legacy has been pirated away by the Democrats.
It's time we in the GOP stole it back.
Environmental Republicans? The idea is hardly novel. Barry Goldwater, the father of the modern conservative movement, was a lifelong conservationist (and a member of REP America.) Richard Nixon signed into law the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act; he also established the Environmental Protection Agency. Ronald Reagan signed laws protecting nearly 10 million acres of national forest and wilderness. Many supporters of Ducks Unlimited, the Mule Deer Foundation, Trout Unlimited, and other sportsmen’s groups are loyal Republicans. They know that the most vital element of their hunting or fishing activities is a healthy forest, river or stream.
Why then the uproar over President Clinton’s proposal to protect our few remaining pristine national forest areas from new logging roads?
It's not as if the logging industry fits the Republican ideal of market-driven commerce. Timber extraction in our national forests is so heavily subsidized by the federal government that the U.S. Forest Service actually lost $1 billion on timber sales over the last five years. Food stamps for Weyerhauser aren’t any more appealing to Republicans than disability payments to drug addicts.
While it’s true that logging in our national forests drives some local economies, that does not justify squandering our natural heritage. Truth is, the economic value of recreation in our national forests is thirty times higher than that of timber. People are not flocking to Oregon, Washington and Utah to become lumberjacks.
Nor will restrictions on new logging roads harm the timber business. Less than 5% of U.S. timber is cut on U.S. Forest Service land, and less than 5% of the potentially marketable Forest Service timber base will be effected by Clinton’s proposal to protect existing large roadless areas. Besides, with timber prices at record lows, it's hard to see why we need to cut down our last great forests to boost an already flooded market.
What about access for recreational users of our forests? Here again, the case for more roads is bankrupt from a Republican point of view. We already have over 380,000 miles of logging roads in our national forests--eight times the length of our interstate highway system. The Forest Service reports less than 40 percent of these roads are properly maintained, and it would like to correct this situation... both to improve access by sportsmen and to reduce damage to rivers and streams from erosion of abandoned logging roads. How can GOP officials justify increasing taxpayer burdens by building new roads when we are unable to maintain those we have right now?
The good news is that rank-and-file Republicans seem to be way ahead of their representatives on Capitol Hill. Polls repeatedly show widespread support for conservation among GOP voters:
A 1999 survey by Zogby International interviewed 1,000 likely GOP voters in Iowa, California, New Hampshire, New York and South Carolina and found that half of GOP voters identified themselves as "environmentalists" and put conservation above traditional GOP causes like cutting taxes or restricting abortion.
A 1999 survey by the Republican firm, American Viewpoint, found that 62 percent of Republicans, including two-thirds of those living in the western states, support Clinton’s proposal to protect roadless areas.
A recent poll of America's 50 million hunters and fishermen (who tend to be Republicans) sponsored by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Alliance (which includes the Izaak Walton League of America, the Mule Deer Foundation, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Trout Unlimited) found that 86 percent support Clinton’s proposal to protect the remaining roadless areas in our national forests.
With history on our side, and Republican voters already convinced, it would seem a simple thing for GOP leaders to steal back from the Democrats some of the initiative on the environmental playing field. Turn about is, after all, fair play.
