Idaho Reports; Conservation With Gaylord Nelson

The. Funding for Idaho reports is provided by the Friends of four 10 and 12. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by a grant from the laurel Moore Cunningham foundation. Tonight a conversation with Gaylord Nelson chairman of the Wilderness Society and former United States senator from Wisconsin. Good evening. As recently as this afternoon negotiations were continuing in Washington D.C. in an effort to resolve the continuing deadlock over a wilderness bill for Idaho. Idaho Republican Senator James McClure the chairman of the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee at Ohio Congressman John Cyberlink a Democrat who chairs the House public land Subcommittee have met twice this week in an attempt to resolve their

differences over just how much. Idaho forest land should be officially protected under the Wilderness Act. Obviously the clock is running quickly on settlement of this issue before the congressional adjournment scheduled early next month. And at any time during the past week you could get just about any possible prediction on the outcome of this issue an issue that by almost all accounts now has badly polarized the whole political process. Tonight we'll get a different view of this issue from the leader of a national conservation group that has been in the forefront of wilderness preservation battles. Our guest is Gaylord Nelson the chairman of the Wilderness Society. Gay or Nelson is a former United States senator from Wisconsin he served 18 years in the Senate where he was a leading conservation voice among other things Gaylord Nelson was the founder of Earth Day and a sponsor of the 1964 Wilderness Act. Good to have you here sir. Thank you here. As I mentioned there is probably no more polarized political issue in Idaho right now than wilderness. Some of the polls put it at 50 percent of the state's residents are opposed to any more wilderness designation.

There's a deep concern about jobs and the possible loss of jobs due to wilderness designation. What do you say to those folks who are concerned about all of those things. Well of course on the question of designation of wilderness and its relationship to job losses there is no significant evidence. I have seen from any studies that would indicate that this had a serious impact. Of course of the eighty six million acres of designated wilderness. Fifty six million is in Alaska one state and 30 about 40 45 percent of all the wilderness designations are in national parks. So those designations didn't cost any jobs at all because the national parks have never permitted timbering are mining or gas and oil drilling the

parks have been established long before there was any modern environmental movement from starting with the first national park. There has been no economic extraction of resources because the Congress the public wanted them to remain as the crown jewels of the country. So there there is not. I've looked at arguments all around this but I have seen no substantive argument at all by the oil companies gas companies Hardrock mineral companies coal companies that indicated any provable case of significant job loss about timber companies. That's where our concern is in this state. Interestingly I'm not aware of any studies that have identified and they should be done. How many jobs depend upon sales because low cost timber sales. I'm hoping that our society will

do that. It has been done long time ago. This issue about sales below cost isn't isn't necessarily necessarily a willingness question of course but I know of no evidence that the any significant evidence that the land's taken out in designated wilderness in the National Forests have had any significant job impact in a matter of fact a lot of people and Recreation located places that they've had they produce economic income. I understand that due to tourism and Recreation you stand a whole that I have read in your papers out here. I think that's about the second most important industry. If you destroy the beauty of the of those and pollute the rivers then that industry is seriously damaged. There are a lot more jobs involved there than there are in areas involving wilderness designation the Wilderness Society has been certainly in Washington and to somewhat a lesser degree in Idaho of a very

major force in this whole discussion of wilderness not only in this state but in many many states. What do you view as the chances of a wilderness bill dealing with Idaho's situation passing before the Congress adjourns. Like I couldn't walk in here and give you more information that you really just gave. If my guess would be this what you have here is a proposal the congressional delegation that was around 500000 acres you have a proposal that's supported by Idaho conservation groups of three million 300000 acres. Then you have the proposal of the of the the end of the Fish and Game Department of the state for I think it's a million eight. So there's a big difference between the 550 and the three million. Three. My guess would be as a practical matter if there is

not agreement between the chairman of the House subcommittee Mr. Stribling and the Idaho delegation that there wouldn't be any bill this session because it's only got up to three weeks or a few weeks to go. So they'd have to be in agreement to do it and whether there'll be agreement I don't know. OK. Let me ask you a couple more specifics about how this issue is being is being viewed in Idaho. There was a good deal of how to describe it concern maybe something deeper than concern when Congressman Cyberlink was out here earlier this summer. A lot of people in Idaho view this issue as an Idaho issue. They say we are the ones that there will be jobs lost there will be Idaho jobs if it does have an impact on the economy it'll be an Idaho impact. And here we have a congressman from Ohio who has a major hand in deciding this issue. And Congressman from 49 other states with the major hand in deciding what do you say to those

folks who say basically we know best in Idaho. Well I understand the argument is a matter of fact it gets more refined now in the Schwamm on the national forest in Wisconsin and the Nicolet National Forest. The people who live around the forest have a view and don't want the people from Milwaukee and Madison telling them what should be done with the forest because they're living in the area. That's natural natural enough. These are however resources that belong to everybody in the United States. The National Forest the national parks the wildlife refuges the Bureau of Land Management lands all belong to the people of the United States Congress acted on the wilderness bill as the Congress representing all the people the United States recognizing that there ought to be preserved some natural areas in their natural state in perpetuity and directed that the Forest Service review their plans and make recommendations. The same is going on in the BLM.

So I understand how somebody may feel well if that's my state we ought to be the final authority. Hardly any of the congressmen included none of the congressman from this state my state or any other state. I live in Alaska where you have a well over half of all the wilderness designations and a big portion of the parks and the new Congress voted down. How much should the parks so much wilderness how much wildlife refuges. Because these are federal lands managed by the federal government in behalf of the people. There is some sentiment apparently in the conservation community in this state now because time is so running so solving this issue before the Congress adjourns some sentiment that well no bill would be better than a bill that we're not really satisfied with. I think that's what I hear. I'm talking with the people all the time from

Idaho and some ran last week and we have a regional representative here and I'm sure that as a general proposition the people not only just in the conservation movement the people who are concerned about preserving some of what they would consider adequate representation of the wilderness areas in this state. We'd rather have no be all than a very poor bill and then to take their chances with the next county. Sure. Sure. I know you have traveled obviously extensively and in many states to view wilderness areas. You've been in Idaho I know a number of times as a conservationist who looks at these areas and tries to decide which should we should fight over and try to preserve what is so significant about the land that is in dispute in Idaho for you as a conservationist. Well Idaho is of course one of the spectacularly beautiful states in the union

with magnificent Rivers seeing the mountains. And Idaho has incidentally more national forest rural areas unroasted areas and acreage than any other state in the union. Of around nine million acres as one who feels strongly and has long before there was any wilderness bill that we ought to be preserving representative ecosystems and natural areas that they're of great value to the country and in many many ways I have said that I supported much more designation of wilderness than Congress has been. Passing. And I would do so because I think it I think they have a great value standing on her. We don't have to in my judgment to cut every tree and cild every river that there are economic values on the other side if you take for example I'm not dismayed by

what the Forest Service did in this state back in the 60s in Roding five hundred forty miles thereabouts in the forest in the watershed of the South Fork of the same river. The total amount of money got was probably lost sales of low cost although asked one of our staff to check that but the total amount of money involved is 14 million dollars that destroyed the salmon run. The Chinook salmon runs spawning beds in the south for and that represents 55 percent of all the Chinook salmon in the Columbia River system. The value of the salmon is far greater than the value of the force. So what rational person would really do that. So it seems to me to be one of the problems that your side if you will in this debate has trouble making is you can always put an economic value

on jobs minerals timber. It's more difficult admittedly to put to put some tangible quantitative value on a seminar. Sure it is although that could I suppose the value of that salmon run and catches the salmon coming back out of the sea to go up to spawn is probably something that's measurable. What about the recreation. What about the sports people who love to go and fish what about the people who sell the peppermint and who are attracted as tourists to the south fork of the salmon or the salmon or the middle fork or what have you. If their values are scenic beauty values are destroyed if this same beds are sold and it's when you put a dollar value you probably can't put a dollar value on it because it is worth too much. But that doesn't justify in my judgment making these massive sales of timber below cost

the the general accounting office study of four regions in the Rocky Mountains one and the other the Pacific Northwest of three thousand two hundred and forty four contracts of timber sales for 1981 made it to the CEOs below cost of those three thousand 244 I believe was totally 156 million in two years. That's a tremendous amount of money. And under what grounds would one justify. In other words massive losses. In other words what you're saying just to explain it's a little different terms the costs of preparing these lands for sale building the roads into them whatever needs to be done is not offset by what the federal government gains by selling your time. That's correct. When the study was done R-GA always that the cost of managing that sale and the cost of the roads exceed the cost and the value of timber Tongass

National Forest in Alaska is the worst one of all. I think that somewhere around 90 million a year alone in losses in the past year I think that's bad economics and it's bad economic policy and bad bad environmental policy. Well I'm sure you would argue that the taxpayer is losing as a result of those situations who's gaming. I don't think there is. This is a relatively new problem really last 15 years or so. And the Foreign Service plans to escalate the clock the San Juan for us down in Colorado gets three cents back for every 97 cents spent. So they're losing 97 cents on every sale. It does make sense by stand the door now there will be places where sales will cost would need to be made. For one reason or another there's no excuse for these massive sales because Senator Maclure I understand he has an amendment to a timber relief

legislation which is on the Senate floor will be next week and his Amendment is supposed to be considered next week that would allow some of these so-called credits that timber companies get for building roads when these sales are that you talk about occur and allow them to transfer those credits around to use them in different places carry them over or perhaps even sell them to someone else. Well the original proposal whether he's changed or not I don't know. The original proposal last year was that access road credits could be used. That is to say if you bid if you bid $100000 on the timber it cost you a hundred thousand dollars for roads. The government gets nothing you break even. Presumably but if it but if it cost a hundred and ten thousand for the to build the roads and there was only $200000 with the timber. This proposal would say was that $10000 of excess road credits then could be used by the timber purchaser and some other purchase. All that would do is fuel the machinery of bids all

over the place and it would make the situation say make it work and make a big hit if that goes on the of the conservation organization so far as I know. I don't know of any who are opposed to to to be changing the timber contracts because of the buying that a lot of companies got into bidding and the price dropped out of it. But if there is this kind of a road credit proposal in there we would we would strongly oppose it. And I doubt very much whether Congress will buy that. But who knows. Well again back to the question of who in effect benefits from this or of the timber companies benefited. Well I think what happens. I think the timber company isn't going to pay more then isn't going to regularly be buying timber if they're going to lose money on it. What's happening is the government is selling it so low that the government is losing money. And I would assume the timber companies are smart enough so that they may lose some sales of course but.

I don't think that the I think the federal government that is losing money on these sales but the environmental damage is the one I'm even more concerned about that. Let me go back just to have one final question on the on the wilderness issue another argument that you hear from time to time in this state is that wilderness is essentially an elitist proposition that it is used by basically rich people who can afford to float the Middle Fork of the salmon or its views by able bodied people who can carry a backpack into the into the River of No Return Wilderness. What do you say to that elitist argument. Well you know that's made about all kinds I've been in the environmental movement for 36 years thirty two and public office when I organized Earth Day in nineteen hundred and seventy for our nationwide demonstrations of concern about the environment. It was attacked as an elitist movement and I pointed out to people that clean air isn't needed as poor people really do

poor people drink the water. It isn't elitist Is it elitist to say that to say the National Symphony is an elitist movement because all the people in the country don't go to the symphony. You preserve I think is important economically and important from an aesthetic and spiritual standpoint that we preserve some of natural America the way it's been for a million years. And isn't the million years or ten thousand if it's after the glacier years of nature's worth were worth saving just for itself let alone scientific reasons. Protection of watersheds recreation for people who want to go and walk in them. I think they have a great very high value and if you went out on the street I think you'd find all kinds of people in the small towns of Idaho who

walked into the Frank Church wilderness of no return or into the wilderness areas of your National Forest. And why do people come out here. Why did I come out. I went to the deep Yellowstone the Tetons this summer up to the Sawtooth to the Frankfort which is no return because the scenic beauty is there and I wanted to and I enjoy seeing it and the way I've been in this state many times. I want to change the subject somewhat. Going on in the time that remains and ask you about the Reagan administration environmental record two years ago or thereabouts the Wilderness Society and you in particular were really up in arms about James Watt the secretary of interior at that time. There was a substantial expectation I think in the in the conservation movement that James Watt would be a political liability for Ronald Reagan. Here we are a month before the election. You can't hardly get anybody to talk about the Reagan administration's environmental record and James Watts old history didn't work out quite the way some people thought it would.

I was. My interest was solely in Secretary Watz anti-environmental policies and and Burford anti-environmental policies over in the EPA was interested in politically one way or the other this issue has never been bipartisan in this country. Teddy Roosevelt was the first of our great conservationist and all down through history it's been Republicans and Democrats and all the bills that have been passed in the 18 years that I was in the Senate and that's when most of them passed had overwhelming Republican and Democratic support and were signed by Presidents Johnson Nixon Ford and Carter. I was concerned about Watz policy. Didn't they make it a partisan political issue. That was the period they made that it was the first time we ever had an administration that made an all out assault on the environmental laws of the country. Never had that before in history and that's how the dispute.

Well as you say an all out assault as you look back on Watz turn what did he really do that was so bad that will leave a lasting impact on the country. Well I could give you a long long string but let's take just one area of succeeding Congresses from 19 in the 1960s all the way up into the 80s. Past authorizations for new Wild Rivers for additions to the parks system for new national parks and we had a fund that was adopted. Using offshore oil royalties and earmarked fund for a maximum of 900 billion a year to acquire these additions to the park system the wild river system and so forth. And every year we'd been acquiring them. We still aren't through acquiring some of them that were authorized like the St. Croix River in my own state still. Forty four hundred acres and that was passed 1968. The river is the whole

thing is that we don't need any more parks. So upset or sad with all of these areas in limbo with the price going up with some of them may never be gotten because of that in holdings all along the St. Croix River in my state. What the administration said and certainly what said that President Johnson President Nixon President Ford and President Carter and all previous congresses were wrong when they voted these additions to the park system they voted them because if you look at the numbers in 1950 there were 30 million visits to our national parks 1980. Three hundred million. Ten. Ten. Ten dime increase in the 30 year period Congress in his judgment in all previous presidents agreed we needed this. That's a permanent damage in administratively and all through the system and the BLM and all over he's done very serious damage. And the same has happened in the EPA and it'll take years to reverse it even under people who are really concerned and

support. Well just give me a brief thumbnail on the two replacements secretary Clark at Interior and Ruckelshaus at EPA are they. Are they starting to turn some of the details as I can see there's no change in policies in the in the Interior Department the different style noisy the different what style has gone over on the in the EPA the Ruckelshaus my own longtime and knew him when he was EPA administrator under President Nixon is a fine man. He's a concerned environmentalist. He was brought in because of the disastrous consequences of the publicity and everything was going on the EPA and he's make He's restored morale and he's making an effort nonetheless. Everything major that he's asked for the administration has turned him down on the question of acid rain which the National Academy of Sciences and the president's own scientific panel says needs to be tackled right

now. He recommended four and a half million a year reduction turned down the administration. The budget has been so badly cut in EPA that he recommended just going back to the last appropriation authorization under President Carter which because of inflation would be a 40 percent decrease in that the purchasing power of that budget. And the administration only gave him half of what he asked. So the thing is that he asked that he thought needed to be done. He was turned down. He is a better administrator. He doesn't believe in the program and it's far better than it was under the previous administration. Yeah. Ronald Reagan would tell us all and he has that he is a friend of the environment that he cares about environmental protection he cares about the National Parks and Wildlife. He cares about whether the earth is all that just a whole lot of talk. Yes. If you walk down on the streets of Boise and you ask every single

person you met for as long as you could stand there for as many days. Everybody would say yes I'm an environmentalist I have never in my life run into a person who's that he wasn't. James Watt said he was a good environmentalist and Burford that he was a good environmentalist. All the oil company executives say they're good environmentalists but their policies don't support what anybody that I would consider a good environmentalist would agree with what I wanted to 10 scale with 10 being the best Where would you put them. The administration's overall environmental record. I would simply rank our daily record. Yes I would rank at the lowest of any administration in the history of this country and I think anybody else who looks at it would say the same. Find me Senator just a minute left. I know when you were in the Senate you led the fight to ban Agent Orange as a use of Agent Orange. Just today a federal court in Washington ruled that the government must stand trial

in the case brought by Vietnam veterans over that issue. We have a comment on that. Well the dispute has been whether or not the government was going should be stuck with any of the right cost of whatever damages could be proved if damages can be proven. And I think that any if if there were damages I think there were and that can be proved. I think both the manufacturer and the government probably should be responsible with the manufacturers the prime one because there is evidence that's been brought into the picture that the manufacturers were hiding the fact that they had evidence that this was dangerous. Well that's a pretty disgraceful thing to do when you consider you've got our boys over there in Vietnam spraying it all over and I moved to stop using it in Vietnam because of Dr. mesos and studies at Harvard that 1969 I believe Senator Gaylord Nelson is very good to have you here you're kind to take the time.

We appreciate it. That's our time for tonight. We'll be back on Monday. By Mark Johnson. Tonight. Funding for Idaho reports is provided by the Friends of four 10 and 12. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by a grant from the laurel Moore Cunningham foundation