The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Thursday, we look at the Clinton administration's way to end the fight over timber in the Pacific Northwest, Greg Hirakawa reports on grazing rights in the West, and we close with a conversation with Jim Courter, chairman of the Base Closing Commission. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: President Clinton today revealed his solution to the timber crisis in the Northwest. He offered a compromise plan which he acknowledged may not make anybody happy. The plan is designed to resolve the dispute between environmentalists and economic interests who've wrangled in the courts over the balance between logging and protection of endangered species. Mr. Clinton's proposal makes large reductions in logging while offering $1.2 billion in economic assistance to offset job losses. He spoke at the White House this morning.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I believe the plan is fair and balanced. I believe it will protect jobs and offer new job opportunities where they must be found. It will preserve the woodlands, the rivers, the streams that make the Northwest an attractive place to live and to visit. We believe in this case it is clear that the Pacific Northwest requires both a healthy economy and a healthy environment and that one cannot exist without the other.

MR. MacNeil: Labor, housing, timber, and paper industry officials criticized the President's compromise and promised to challenge it in court. They said the plan unfairly favors environmentalists, will drive up housing costs, and eliminate 85,000 jobs. Environmentalists also objected. They said the plan fell short of what was needed to protect the ancient forests and had loopholes which would allow excessive logging. We'll focus on this story right after the News Summary. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Ninety-two U.S. military installations overseas will be shut down or scaled back. The Pentagon announcement today said most of the cuts will be in Germany. Troop strength will go from 168,000 to about 100,000 by 1996. President Clinton reportedly has approved a commission's plan to close or reduce dozens of bases in this country. It's expected to announce his decision tomorrow and send it to Congress, which would then have 45 days to act on the list. We'll speak with the chairman of the Base Closing Commission later in the program. The shuttle Endeavor landed safely at Cape Canaveral, Florida, this morning, two days later than planned. NASA aborted earlier landings because of bad weather. The six astronauts retrieved a European satellite during their 11-day mission.

MR. MacNeil: Flood conditions persisted today along the upper Mississippi River. Heavy rains fell again overnight. Workers along the Mississippi tried to hold back the water with sand bags. The National Weather Service issued a series of flash flood watches for Central Illinois and said more rain was expected through the weekend. Forecasters said the Mississippi River is expected to crest Saturday in Davenport, Iowa. President Clinton said today he expects to ask Congress for emergency money for farmers and others who suffered losses. Thunderstorms, accompanied by tornadoes and heavy winds hit parts of Kansas and Ohio last night. Trees were uprooted and three homes were destroyed.

MR. LEHRER: The Denny's restaurant chain agreed today to increase minority employment and provide contracts to minority-owned firms. Several lawsuits have been filed against Denny's charging discrimination. Most recently, six black Secret Service agents claimed they were served more slowly than their white colleagues at a Denny's in Annapolis, Maryland. Today's agreement was signed by the NAACP and officials of Denny's owners, the Flag Star Corporation, at NAACP headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland.

REV. BENJAMIN CHAVIS, Executive Director, NAACP: The derivative economic benefit from this agreement between the NAACP and Flag Star is not only historic for this moment but historic for the future. We're hoping that this relationship between the NAACP and Flag Star will serve as a model for the rest of corporate America and for the rest of the civil rights movement.

MR. LEHRER: The agreement applies to all restaurants owned by Flag Star Corporation, which employs 120,000 people.

MR. MacNeil: A ninth suspect is now in custody in connection with the plot to bomb the United Nations and other New York City targets. He was identified as 27 year old Earl Grant. Police and FBI agents arrested him in Philadelphia yesterday. They said he would be charged with conspiring to transport explosives. He's expected to be extradited to New York to face trial with the eight others charged in the alleged plot. Two Israelis were killed in an attack in Jerusalem today. Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a bus, killing one woman and wounding the driver and a second passenger. The two attackers hijacked the car in an attempt to get away. They and a woman driver of the car died in a shoot out with security forces. Police detonated several bombs left on the bus by the attackers after they fled. The latest round of Middle East peace talks ended in Washington today with little progress reported. Israel was not able to settle differences with the Palestinians over the extent of self-rule in the occupied territories and Arab East Jerusalem. Neither side reacted positively to a U.S. proposal aimed at bridging the gap. Israel's talks with Syria are also hung up over the future of the Golan Heights.

MR. LEHRER: There was more fighting in Bosnia today. Croats battled Muslim government troops for control of the key southern city of Mostar. U.N. officials said Croats and Serbs continued their joint offensive against Muslims in other parts of the republic. Serb women and children blocked a U.N. convoy headed for the Muslim enclave of Gorazde. The U.N.-declared safe area came under heavy Serb bombardment during the day. Tough new immigration regulations took effect in Germany today. They were enacted after a string of right wing attacks on immigrants. Germany had Europe's most liberal asylum laws. More than 2 million refugees entered the country since 1989. Under the new policy, any refugees arriving from a European Community nation or one that borders Germany will be turned back. The International Monetary Fund has agreed to give Russia a $1.5 billion loan. The head of the fund said today Russia had succeeded in reducing runaway inflation and was making good progress towards sustainable economic growth.

MR. MacNeil: George "Spanky" McFarland, the child star of the "Our Gang" comedies died yesterday at a Texas hospital after suffering a heart attack. McFarland began his career in 1931 when he was just three years old. He soon became known to millions through the "Our Gang" and "Little Rascals" series produced in Hollywood in the '30s and '40s. He was 64. That's it for the News Summary. Just ahead, the timber compromise for the Northwest, grazing rights in the West, and making base closings palatable. FOCUS - NURTURING NATURE

MR. LEHRER: The timber decision is our lead story tonight. Last April, President Clinton hosted a timber summit in the Pacific Northwest aimed at resolving a wrenching dispute about endangered species, forests, and jobs. Today Mr. Clinton offered a billion dollar compromise solution that would restrict logging in federal forests to about 1.2 billion board feet a year, set aside preserves for the spotted owl, outline "no logging" zones to protect streams and watersheds, create a 1.2 billion dollar economic relief package for the Pacific Northwest, and end tax subsidies to companies that export raw logs. The plan also sets aside the areas for experimental timber harvesting. The President talked about the plan and the process that preceded it this morning at the White House.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The plan provides an innovative approach to forest management to protect the environment and to produce a predictable and sustainable level of timber sales. It offers a comprehensive, long-term plan for economic development, and it makes sure that federal agencies for a change will be working together for the good of all the people of the region. The plan is more difficult than I had thought it would be in terms of the size of the timber cuts in part because during this process the amount of timber actually in the forest and available for cutting was revised downward sharply in no small measure because of years of over cutting and in a way that provides an annual yield smaller than timber interests had wanted and a plan without some of the protections that environmentalists had sought. I can only say that as with every other situation in life, we have to play the hand we were dealt. Had this crisis been dealt with years ago, we might have a plan with a higher yield and with more environmentally protected areas. We are doing the best we can with the facts as they now exist in the Pacific Northwest. Too often in the past the issues which this plan addressed have simply wound up in court, while the economy, the environment, and the people suffered. These issues are clearly difficult and divisive. You will see that in the response to the position that our demonstration has taken. If they were easy, they would have been answered long ago. The main virtue of our plan, besides being fair and balanced is that we attempt to answer the questions and let people get on with their lives. We could not, we could not permit more years of the status quo to continue where everything was paralyzed in the courts. this plan meets the need for year around, high wage, high skilled jobs and a sustained, predictable level of economic activity in the forests. It protects the long-term health of the forests, our wildlife, and our waterways. It is clearly scientifically sound, ecologically credible, and legally defensible. By preserving the forest and setting predictable and sustainable levels of timber sales, it protects jobs not just in the short-term but for years to come. We offer new assistance to workers and to families for job training and retraining where that will inevitably be needed as a result of the sustainable yield level set in the plan. New assistance to businesses and industries to expand and create, new family wage jobs for local workers, new assistance to communities to build the infrastructure to support new and diverse sources of economic growth, and new initiatives to create jobs by investing in research and restoration in the forests, themselves. And we end the subsidies for log exports that end up exporting American jobs. This plan offers an innovative approach to conservation protecting key watersheds and the most valuable our old growth forests. It protects key rivers and streams while saving the most important groves of ancient trees and providing habitat for salmon and other endangered species. And it establishes new adaptive management areas to develop new ways to achieve economic and ecological goals and to help communities to shape their own future.

MR. LEHRER: Reaction came quickly from Capitol Hill. Here's a sampling of that.

SEN. MARK HATFIELD, [R] Oregon: From what I do understand, it appears to me that the ratio of common sense is inverse proportionately to the number of scientists and bureaucrats who have participated in the process. But, again, I cannot speak to something that is like a floating crap game in that one does not know what the specifics are, and one has not yet been told about the details. I think we have a heyday for the lawyers. I think this is perhaps a lawyer economic development program. From what I understand, there are lawsuits ready to be filed from all sides of this issue, and we're right back into the courts. If anything, so far that I have heard, it appears as though the courts are going to take over greater control, which means no resolve of this issue.

REP. JOLENE UNSOELD, [D] Washington: You have to think of what the President inherited, a stupifyingly, horrendous mess where we had two administrations that not only denied there was a problem, they ordered the professionals within their agencies not to come up with an alternative management plan to deal with the problem. And we had a Congress stymied in our inability in the absence of leadership from the White House to come up with a consensus to get us out of court.

MR. LEHRER: More on this plan now from two critics and an administration official. Karin Sheldon is president of the Wilderness Society. Denny Scott is the economist for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, which has 550,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, 30,000 are Northwest timber workers. Tom Collier is chief of staff for the Secretary of the Interior. Mr. Scott, President Clinton said the plan was fair and balanced. Do you agree?

MR. SCOTT: It's not fair, it's not balanced, and it's not a solution. Regretfully --

MR. LEHRER: What is it then?

MR. SCOTT: We're back in the courts. We're at status quo. I doubt very much whether the administration can produce the timber volumes that they claim they can produce, and they're underestimating drastically the dislocation that will occur out of this program.

MR. LEHRER: Dislocation meaning the loss of jobs and that sort of thing?

MR. SCOTT: Heavy unemployment will occur.

MR. LEHRER: What would you estimate the cost of this plan would be in that area?

MR. SCOTT: The cost of this plan is in the neighborhood of seventy-five to eighty-five thousand primary and secondary jobs in the Northwest, and the administration --

MR. LEHRER: What kind of jobs are these?

MR. SCOTT: These are jobs in the woods. They're jobs in sawmills, plywood mills, in local communities, the barbershop, the grocery store, and in urban areas in the Northwest that support the forest products industry in rural areas.

MR. LEHRER: Permanent loss, those jobs will always be lost, or will they be temporarily lost while something else happens and then they will come back?

MR. SCOTT: I think that's, that's the desire of the administration to transition these folks into other employment. This plan doesn't do a very good job of that. The one point two or one point five million dollar program is really not very much new money. For example, the revenue sharing program is equal to and slightly above what the region was getting anyway, so it's not very well thought out. It's a patchwork of programs that aren't very well directed, I'm afraid.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. we'll get back to your specifics in a moment with Mr. Collier, but first, an overview from you, Ms. Sheldon. In terms from the environmental point of view, is this a fair and balanced plan?

MS. SHELDON: Well, I'd say initially the Wilderness Society applauds the President's efforts to come to grips with a situation that has produced gridlock and gridlock in the Northwest. We have grave concerns about the plan as it was announced today, but we're committed to work with the President and the administration to solve those issues in the future, and we think that that can happen.

MR. LEHRER: What are your major concerns?

MS. SHELDON: We're concerned principally by the absence of permanent, protective reserves in the plan. There will be --

MR. LEHRER: Reserves, you're talking about timber.

MS. SHELDON: -- reserves that are off limits to timber harvests. The plan calls for some timber harvest across the landscape. We're also concerned that the high level of cuts --

MR. LEHRER: Wait a minute. You're going to have to -- I'm going to have to stop you as you all talk about all of this. Those of us who are not involved in this intricately or do not live in the Pacific Northwest, when you say reserve, you mean you want, what you wanted, what your, your movement wanted were particular parts of the forests, of the national forests in the Pacific Northwest completely preserved forever, is that right?

MS. SHELDON: Right.

MR. LEHRER: Never allowed to be forested?

MS. SHELDON: Not our wish only but scientists including the inter-agency scientific community and other government scientists have recommended the setting aside of large areas of land where no timber harvest whatsoever was permitted in order to protect the ancient forest ecosystem and the species that inhabit it.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Now the failure of this plan to do that would cause what consequences in your opinion?

MS. SHELDON: Cause the further fragmentation of an ecosystem that is already on the verge of collapse. We have 10 percent of the remaining ancient forest ecosystem existing at this time. I flew on Monday between Portland --

MR. LEHRER: Wait a minute. Let me stop you there. Ecosystem, define an ecosystem for me in terms of how it relates to what we're talking about.

MS. SHELDON: All right. An ecosystem is the inter-relationship of plants, animals, the soil, the water, the air. It is the biological diversity. The ancient forest ecosystem is that, a collection of communities of life, including the big trees, the salmon, the spotted owl, the marble muralet, all of the species that are associated with these trees and live together in a relationship.

MR. LEHRER: And your theory is and the scientific theory is that once you start fooling with one part of the system you can disrupt the entire system, is that right?

MS. SHELDON: We know that that is, in fact, happening. The spotted owl is rather like the canary in the mine. It is signalling that this forest ecosystem is on the verge of unraveling, and we need to take steps now, and that is why we had pushed so hard for permanent, inviolate reserves that would allow for this ecosystem to maintain itself.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Here again, we will get back to the specifics. Mr. Collier, here we've heard from two of the major interests involved in what's going on out there and neither are happy, either is happy. What's the problem? How could you come up with a solution that made nobody happy?

MR. COLLIER: Well, the problem is a problem. The President today, you know, he looked this tough problem right in the eye and he didn't flinch, and I think that's one of the most important things. The gridlock in the Northwest has been there for a long time, and today this administration set up a plan. It was a tough plan to set out, as you heard from my friends on labor and industry. They're not happy with us, and the environmental community is expressing concerns also, and it made it all the more difficult for us to decide how we were going to deal with this issue. But the President set out some principles, and I think they're very important. He decided he's going to comply with the law. He decided he was going to rely on the best science available to do that, and he decided he was going to pull together an economic package that dealt with the consequences to the communities and to the workers of this festering issue that's developed in the Northwest, and he's done those things, and we're going to move very aggressively to implement this plan and then to break the gridlock in the Northwest, and with all due respect to my friend, Denny Scott, we're going to get timber sales out there this fall, and we're going to make sure those mills keep running.

MR. LEHRER: But you also heard what Mr. Scott said. His main point is that first of all you all have vastly misjudged the dislocation. In other words, there are going to be more jobs lost than you believe. You say 85,000, is that right, Mr. Scott, and do you agree?

MR. COLLIER: No, and in fact, you know, the job estimate game you can play a lot of different ways. Let me say something about our job estimates. We estimate 6,000 jobs lost. Our estimates --

MR. LEHRER: Six thousand?

MR. COLLIER: Six thousand.

MR. LEHRER: And you say 85,000?

MR. SCOTT: Right.

MR. COLLIER: Let me explain the differences.

MR. LEHRER: All right.

MR. COLLIER: First of all, I want to let you know that our estimates are based on the work of Norm Johnson and Brian Greeber. They're both scientists from Oregon State University. They're not Department of Agriculture or Department of Interior employees, and based on their work, we've come up with this number. Now the two big differences, Mr. Scott is counting incidental job losses, not direct losses, but when we build back the jobs that we're going to build back, we're going to build back those incidental jobs also. So when we focused on job count, we decided that it was best just to focus on the direct jobs that are lost. The second thing we did is you've got to start with the base line. How many years back are you going to compare it? Are you going to compare it to the outrageously high cutting that was done in the mid '80s? Are you going to compare it to where things were last year? If you look at the timber that flowed through last year and you look at the direct job loss, the best scientists say 6,000 jobs. Now our plan is going to put 8,000 new jobs back into the community, direct jobs.

MR. LEHRER: So what's the problem, Mr. Scott?

MR. SCOTT: The problem is counting. I mean, we can count jobs different ways. I think you have to count impact. You have to count jobs in communities and people who will not have jobs as a result of this program. This program reduces timber harvests by 80 percent, 80 percent. You cannot have that kind of reduction without having a massive impact on that region, and that's exactly what we're going to have.

MR. LEHRER: Well you don't, you don't dispute that figure, do you, that there's going to be that, well the AP says three-quarters of the timber next year, there'll be three-quarters less harvested under this plan than were last year.

MR. COLLIER: That's about right, but maybe not. There's a lot that's in the pipeline that we can move out. We hope to get about 2 billion board feet of timber moved out into the Northwest this year. And that's about what was moved out last year. So some of those numbers depend on how you go back and whether you're counting harvest, whether you're counting sales, but we're going to get some timber out to these communities, and the job losses are not going to be as great as industry says.

MR. LEHRER: Let me ask Ms. Sheldon on this issue of job loss. Are you all concerned about that at all, or do you believe that your side of the argument which is the ecosystem argument is much more important than the job loss? Where do you come down on this problem between these two?

MS. SHELDON: Obviously, we're concerned about job losses, because the human communities are a part of the ecosystem as well, but there is a very simple way to deal with the 6,000 job loss figure that the President has estimated.

MR. LEHRER: And you buy that figure, you do not buy Mr. Scott on that?

MS. SHELDON: Let's begin with the President's figure. If he end jobs, log exports, excuse me, we would more than compensate for the loss of jobs that are estimated to occur in the President's plan. Fully one in four of every log that's cut in the Northwest is exported raw to Japan, and if those logs stayed home, jobs would be created, and money would be available to support the industry. Mr. Scott's figures of seventy or eighty thousand job losses are simply not credible. No one supports those. We have to look at the economic situation in the Northwest. This is not a timber dependent region as a whole. Less than 4 percent of the region's economic base is timber. Granted, there are rural communities that are dependent on timber. It is time for those communities, as many of them recognize, to make a transition to a diversified economy that will sustain them in the future. Timber will be a part of the Northwest landscape, and there will be timber jobs. But it's important for us to diversify where appropriate and the President has included economic provisions to help make that possible. The Wilderness Society too has been working with 22 timber-dependent communities in Washington and Oregon to help make that possible.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Scott.

MR. SCOTT: I wish the answer were as easy as curtailing log export, but the President's program to reduce the tax subsidy to log exporters is correct. It's a good policy position. But it's a very marginal impact on the price of logs. It's not going to cause logs to flow from European markets and Asian markets back into the U.S. unfortunately. We've got a major crisis. These mills have been operating for three years on timber that they purchased before the court injunctions. That timber is about to run out, and so they've been operating on that supply. And when it runs out late this summer or this fall, we virtually fall off the cliff. If Tom is right and they can produce two billion board feet in 1993 and '94, I'll applaud the administration. But they are trying to dip into some Indian lands and do some salvage sales, and every time they put up a timber sale, it's still subject to a court suit, because they havenot addressed the problem with the judge. And these sales are still under injunction no matter how you look at it.

MR. LEHRER: Because of lawsuits --

MR. SCOTT: Right.

MR. LEHRER: -- that have caused the gridlock, part of the gridlock in the first place. Let's go to the second part of the thing. Let's go to Ms. Sheldon's complaints, of the environmental complaints about this plan today, that, that while you took some steps, well, you heard what she said, you didn't go far enough in protecting these ecosystems.

MR. COLLIER: Nobody probably went far enough in our plan but, but we've got 8.5 million acres of old growth forest out there in the Northwest. 80 percent of that, 6.6 million, has been set aside in reserves, and we think that that's what's necessary to comply with the law to make sure that we provide adequate habitat for the species that want to exist out there along with the rest of that community.

MR. LEHRER: Why didn't you go as far as they wanted you to go?

MR. COLLIER: Because we don't need to go that far as the --

MR. LEHRER: For economic, I mean, for any kind of reason?

MR. COLLIER: To comply with the law. We set out a goal here, the President did, that he was going to comply with statutes that are on the books. And we wanted to go as far as we had to go to comply with those statutes, but we didn't want to go much further, because we don't want to push folks out of work. This President cares about one person being put out of work, so we chose the option that would enable us to firmly convince any court, anybody who wants to sue us, that we're complying with the law, but at the same time would allow the most timber to move into those communities. 80 percent of the old growth was set aside in reserves.

MR. LEHRER: 80 percent --

MR. SCOTT: But they did go a little bit too far, and the science is not that good. The scientists admitted that their watershed protection plan has not been ground tested and is not creditable until it's ground tested. The scientists said and admitted that they probably took too much range for the marble muralet.

MR. LEHRER: The what?

MR. SCOTT: That's a sea bird that's been threatened, and they've set aside a 50 mile corridor from the, from the border of Washington State down through California. They're protecting habitat --

MR. LEHRER: Well, they went too far?

MR. SCOTT: -- where there are no fish, for example.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. But you believe they didn't go far enough. You heard Mr. Collier's explanation as to why they didn't go, they didn't need to go any further. They did 80 percent. Why go the whole 100 percent? It wasn't required by law and by the science.

MS. SHELDON: Well, it remains to be seen whether this plan is legal or not. We certainly expect to be involved in the process by which that will be judged.

MR. LEHRER: So you're going to sue 'em?

MS. SHELDON: No, not necessarily. We have a process. When the plan is reported to the court on July 16th as part of the draft environmental impact statement that the judge has required to be submitted there will be a public comment period after that where any citizen can voice his or her concerns about the plan. We'll have a look at it then, and we'll determine whether or not it is legal. The more important point, however, is what is needed for this ecosystem to survive. What you're hearing from Collier is a shay of at the margins approach that we'll do the least we can do and skate by the law. This ecosystem needs full protection. It is already tattered. We are talking about the last 10 percent of an ecosystem that has been cut. We think we should protect it all.

MR. SCOTT: Let's talk about ecosystem protection. This plan ignores private lands, and private lands are interspersed with the federal lands in this plan. The private lands don't give any credit whatsoever for the owl habitat and the marble muralet habitat, and I would say to this administration that perhaps we ought to come up with a voluntary program so that we can release some timber from the federal land and get more timber from the private lands and in the bargain develop habitat for these wildlife --

MR. LEHRER: Did you consider something like that?

MR. COLLIER: Yeah, we did. We took a hard look at private land, and, in fact, we're committed to relieving some of the restrictions that have been on the private lands, and we're going to come out with something called a 4 D Rule, and the impact of that will be we're going to free up a lot of private land in the Northwest so that that can go into production. That will provide jobs too, so I think we've come to all of these things, and what we were searching for was balance, and I think we found balance. As you hear, I'm getting shot at from both sides here, and we find ourselves right in the middle.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Can you in simplest terms, Mr. Collier, just give me a straight report now on what the process is from this point on. We heard about it's got to go back to the judge and whatever. Take me through now what happens from this point on.

MR. COLLIER: Well, we're committed to putting this plan in place administratively, and there's a process that you have to go through in order to do that. Now, the first thing is we're going to have a public comment period, and we look forward to --

MR. LEHRER: When does that begin?

MR. COLLIER: It begins on the 16th of July.

MR. LEHRER: And runs for how long?

MR. COLLIER: Runs for 90 days.

MR. LEHRER: For 90 days. Okay.

MR. COLLIER: And at the end of --

MR. LEHRER: And that's the one that Ms. Sheldon, that you were talking about.

MR. COLLIER: At the end of that period we take a look at those public comments and then we --

MR. LEHRER: Who's "we?"

MR. COLLIER: The administration.

MR. LEHRER: The administration. Okay.

MR. COLLIER: The Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture.

MR. LEHRER: All right.

MR. COLLIER: Working together for a change, so I hope we can move this along. At that point we make any changes we think are necessary from public comments, and we come out with a final environmental impact statement which we publish. We have to wait 30 days and we come out with a record of decision, and we wait another 30 days and we've got ourselves a plan that we can put in place. And it's at that point that we believe we will comply with the order of this federal judge who's got everything tied up.

MR. LEHRER: What federal judge?

MR. COLLIER: Judge Dwyer.

MR. LEHRER: In --

MR. COLLIER: In Seattle.

MR. LEHRER: In Seattle. Okay.

MR. COLLIER: And he has right now the sales under injunction, and we believe that we've put together a plan that will convince him to lift that injunction.

MR. LEHRER: So if anybody, these two folks or anybody else in the world thinks you haven't, then they go before Judge Dwyer at that point, and then Judge Dwyer makes the decision as to whether or not this proceeds, right?

MR. COLLIER: That's correct.

MR. LEHRER: So --

MS. SHELDON: No --

MR. LEHRER: No?

MS. SHELDON: -- that's not correct.

MR. LEHRER: Not correct?

MS. SHELDON: Only the parties to the lawsuit can go back before the judge and raise issues about the plan.

MR. LEHRER: Exactly. I didn't mean anybody off the street, but that's where, it's the judge who decides. You, you, after you hear your public comments, you go back to the judge and the judge decides whether or not, and then anybody who doesn't agree with that or is party to the suit can then appeal. This thing could be tied up for a long time.

MR. SCOTT: No, no, it could be. I believe it will be. It does not prohibit or prevent others from filing additional lawsuits. That timetable that Mr. Collier laid out gets us into December-January by my count. That means it's going to be very, very difficult to have timber in the pipeline in 1993 and early '94. It takes time to prepare a timber sale.

MR. COLLIER: But we got a billion board feet of timber out there that's not tied up in this litigation that we can move out into this region immediately. We've got another billion board feet of timber that's ready to be sold, and we got to convince this judge of is he ought to lift the injunction. And we're going to try to convince him to lift that injunction before January, and if we're unsuccessful in that, we'll convince him to lift it in January, and then we think we're going to get another billion board feet of timber out in new sales right after that. And we want to move these along, and we're pretty confident we're going to prevail in this litigation.

MR. LEHRER: All right. We will follow. We will follow the courts. Thank you all three very much. Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, grazing rights in the West, and the thinking behind the base closing choices. FOCUS - RANGE WARS

MR. MacNeil: We turn now to another pitched political battle over how the federal government exercises its stewardship of Western land. In this case the fight is about the fees ranchers pay to graze their cattle on public land. Greg Hirakawa of public station KCTS in Seattle reports.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Fifty-seven year old Marc Stevens is a fourth generation Montana rancher. He runs cattle on land his great grandfather homesteaded more than a hundred years ago.

MARC STEVENS, Montana Rancher: This is some of the original fence that my great grandfather had put in there in the 1880s.

MR. HIRAKAWA: His land sits on the foot of what has since become the Custer National Forest. Every spring, he moves his cattle off his 1,000 acre ranch and onto 20,000 acres of federal land he leases from the U.S. Forest Service. It is something he and his family have done for generations. The government charges Stevens $1.86 to graze one cow for one month on public range land. For Stevens, that comes out to about $10,000 a year. The government is now considering raising the grazing fee. According to Stevens, it is a move that will threaten a way of life as old as the West, itself.

MARC STEVENS: If you figure a $2 increase, I would hesitate to say what it would do right in our area. I know there would be a number of ranches that would be out of business.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Are you certain of that?

MARC STEVENS: And I am very certain of that.

MR. HIRAKAWA: The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lease out an estimated 240 million acres of range land to ranchers across the West. The federal lease rate can sometimes be 1/8 the rate for grazing cattle on private land.

TOM FRANCE, National Wildlife Federation: I think on the fee side of it public lands ranchers have been getting a pretty outrageous subsidy for a lot of years.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Critics like environmentalists Tom France call the low federal fee "cowboy welfare." He charges American taxpayers have been helping underwrite the ranching industry and the environmental destruction of the Western range for decades.

GROUP PROTESTING: Range reform now! Range reform now!

MR. HIRAKAWA: Along with the fight for water, the debate over the federal grazing fee has been one of the longest running controversies facing the American West. During the 1800s, newly arrived Western ranchers had free and open access to range land owned by the federal government. As the industry flourished, ranchers began running larger and larger herds which led to over grazing and environmental damage through the Western range. Ranchers were destroying the land they needed to stay in business. So in 1906, the U.S. Forest Service imposed a fee on land it controlled and began regulating its use. By 1934, the ranching industry agreed to congressional and conservationists' demands for fees and regulations on the rest of the range. In return, the government would improve the land and provide for its orderly use. But today the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management report almost 20 percent of federal range land remains in poor or unsatisfactory condition, primarily damaged by grazing cattle.

JIM ROSCOE, Wildlife Biologist: You've got very little soil right in here on these banks, and that's part of the reason that you don't have the vegetation that would hold that.

MR. HIRAKAWA: BLM Wildlife Biologist Jim Roscoe says when cattle graze away grass, stream banks like this one erode. The erosion is filling in spawning areas for fish. The lack of vegetation is also making it more difficult for this stream to even hold water. It now runs dry during the summer. According to Roscoe, nature's recovery cycle is no longer working along this waterway.

JIM ROSCOE: In most instances, this is about as bad as you find, because usually when you get to this point you're not functioning, and at that point it's going to take an awful lot to bring it back.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Environmentalists and former Forest Service range land manager John Mumma says improving the public range should be in the ranchers' own interest.

JOHN MUMMA, Former Forest Service Manager: But what really bothers me is the condition of our land. You know, it's had a hundred years of more of very intensive use, and we've lost a lot of productivity. We've lost a lot of desirable grasses, and I would be more concerned about improving the condition of the ranges which is better for the ranching industry, better for the wildlife species and society in general.

MARC STEVENS: All along this bank this higher ground has healed up a great deal of what it was when I was say 18 years old.

MR. HIRAKAWA: But Marc Stevens thinks ranchers have been stewards of the land than environmentalists give them credit for. Along a small stream he uses, Stevens concedes cattle have trampled the short stretch of bank, but he says grass will grow back once his cattle leave later this year. He is certain because he has watched this area recover before.

MARC STEVENS: I'm not the least bit ashamed of the way this looks right here, and when people, if they ask that question, I say, like I said to you, even this is probably in much better condition than it was at the time my great grandfather came here.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Nevertheless, critics say it is not good enough. In opposing the ranching industry, environmentalists believe they are not only protecting Western range land, they are protecting taxpayers' wallets. According to the latest government figures, restoring and managing public range lands cost the government $74 million a year. Grazing fees return only about $27 million annually. Take out $5 1/2 million which go to state and county governments, and the U.S. grazing program lost more than $52 million in 1990 alone. By most accounts, the grazing program is hardly significant when compared to a $300 billion federal budget deficit. But raising the grazing fee has never been easy. The rancher has long been a symbol of the wild American West, an image that even today critics say has won support from lawmakers.

TOM FRANCE: They have been able to thwart reform effort after reform effort in Congress. They are a very effective political lobby.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Ranchers were successful again earlier this year when President Clinton called for raising the grazing fee in his federal budget. The President withdrew the proposed hike after stiff opposition from Western Senators. Now the administration is trying again. This spring at a public hearing in Bozman, Montana, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said he's looking for compromise.

BRUCE BABBITT, Interior Secretary: We've got to try to search for some consensus, and it's not easy. It involves a certain amount of trust and confidence, or openness, or willingness to listen, a respect for the facts.

MR. HIRAKAWA: But there is little common ground on this issue. Ranchers say they are acting in the country's best economic interests.

R.C. "BOB" SEARS, Idaho Cattlemen's Association: The fact that there is anyone who has been subsidized by the level of these prices, it is and has always been the consumers of the low priced food that we successfully produced from the dry, arid lands of the West. [applause]

MR. HIRAKAWA: While critics, few of whom showed up here, deny that. They argue the price of beef will not rise should the public grazing fee increase. They say there are not enough public land ranchers to have such an impact. According to government figures, only 9 percent of the nation's beef supply is grazed even part-time on public land annually.

TOM FRANCE: I think they're overstating their case. They have a terrific subsidy to defend. They've defended it tenaciously for decades.

MR. HIRAKAWA: The overriding issue for years has been: What is public range land worth? Private grazing leases, ranchers say, include expenses such as access roads, fencing, and even ranch hands to move cattle from place to place. Such means fuel out of pocket costs for ranchers.

MARC STEVENS: I'd say that's about like comparing dinner at McDonald's to dinner at your favorite night club, and you can pay $2, or you can pay $30. You get what you pay for.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Ranching critics concede public land is probably not worth as much as private land, but they say the difference is less than what grazing fees indicate.

JOHN MUMMA: The best way to find out about that is, is go out and put it on the open market. Let people bid and set up a few examples, and you'll find out that the actual values are probably much more close than they are distant. They are more similar than they are apart.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Sec. Babbitt says he would try to reach a compromise in this dispute sometime this fall. Marc Stevens is already betting the grazing fee will go up. The only questions he has are: How much, and will it finally end the controversy or be a short truce in a battle which has lasted almost an entire century. CONVERSATION - MILITARY BASE

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, the man who has been handling the hottest political potato in Washington, military base closings, without burning his figures. An independent bipartisan commission today formally recommended President Clinton a wave of new base closings that will cost thousands of civilian jobs. The biggest closings were the Charleston shipyard and navy base, five installations in the San Francisco Bay area, three in southern California, and navy facilities in Orlando, Florida, and Memphis, Tennessee. Also closed was the Staten Island, New York naval station whose fate has been chronicled here on the NewsHour. Most of the panel's decisions followed Pentagon recommendations. But the panel overruled some and kept open eight bases, including two in New Jersey, a submarine base in Connecticut, and Florida's Homestead air force base which was flattened by last year's hurricane. President Clinton is expected to adopt the recommendations. Then Congress has the power to vote the entire plan up or down but not to amend it selectively. James Courter, the commission chairman and a former Republican New Jersey Congressman, joins us now. Mr. Chairman, thank you for joining us.

MR. COURTER: Nice to be here.

MR. MacNeil: Your recommendations have caused a lot of anguish but nothing like the storm that greeted the first base commission in 1988. What did you and your colleagues do differently this time?

MR. COURTER: Well, I'm not sure that we did too much differently this time versus last time. We were very concerned about following the criteria that the Congress laid out for us. We wanted to make sure that each base that was on the Pentagon's list. We had a visit. We made sure that one commissioner visited those vicinities and, that was very helpful. We wanted to make sure that members of Congress and communities had an ample opportunity to testify about the merits of their particular facilities, which was helpful, and we wanted to make sure as well, and I think this was the key, that we did everything in the public. We wanted to have the hearings opened to the public. We wanted to make sure that members of Congress had sufficient time to talk about the attributes of their facilities. We had all of our deliberations in the public so people could arrive at their own conclusions with regard to the objectivity of our decision. And after it was done, most members of Congress, with some exceptions, but most members of Congress, recognized that that which we did was based on the merits, and that we did apply as we were supposed to our own independent judgment and not act as a rubber stamp to the Pentagon. And it worked out okay. Members of Congress recognized that this process of an open commission exercising this power became necessary to break through the paralysis and the gridlock that existed so many years in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask you about your method. Every base you considered obviously had a military role and closing it or curtailing it had an economic impact. How did you weigh one against the other, and did you at times choose the potential economic impact as a higher value than the military role?

MR. COURTER: Under the law, Robin, we are supposed to give greater weight to the -- not the economic impact but the military value of a facility. And that was broken down by its mission, its capability to support that mission, its operational capability, its ability to meet contingencies, conditional flexibility that the base may be required to have in the future, and we were concerned about the cost, the military cost, the impact on, on manpower, and then as, as the second criteria when other things were roughly equal between bases, then economic impactcould be a determining factor. From my review, and as I think over all the 130 bases we closed or realigned, that was a driving force in the bay area in California.

MR. MacNeil: Meaning that --

MR. COURTER: Economic impact.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah.

MR. COURTER: It meant that one facility of the five was not closed, the depot. It was a deciding factor in Homestead, among other factors, but it was an important factor. We kept -- you mentioned in the program that we kept Homestead Air Force Base in Florida open. Actually we agreed with the closure save for the reserve component, and it was also a factor in us seeking an effort to assist the people in Charleston, because basically the navy recommendation was to close everything, the shipyard and the naval station, the electronic facility, and the other facilities, so we tried to consolidate some electronic maintenance facilities in Charleston. So save for those three areas, the decisions were driven by the military value component.

MR. MacNeil: The, some communities, Charleston was probably a good example, mounted major campaigns. They spent a lot of money to try and keep their base open, yet in the end you recommended closing it. Did those big campaigns make a difference at all, or did communities that didn't do that fare equally well or equally badly?

MR. COURTER: I'm not going to say that communities should not spend what they think they have to. The stakes are high, and you don't really want to leave anything to chance. So you put everything on the table. You spend as much money as you can trying to articulate the importance, the cruciality of your defense base, of your facility. But we were driven by the merits. It wasn't the number of people. It wasn't the type of expert witnesses that testified. It was really what they said. How crucial was this facility? We looked at over capacity. We looked at the type of redundancy that is there in our domestic bases, and with the dramatic drawdown and shrinkage of the, of the force structure, coming down by about 40 percent over nine years. We recognized that we had to make efficiencies and close a lot of bases. If you add up all the bases that we closed in 1988 when there was a round of base closures, 1991 when there was a further round of base closures, and the 130 bases that we realigned substantially and closed this year, we're closing about 18 percent of the domestic bases, all the while reducing defense spending by 40 percent and the number of men and women in uniform and the hardware by about 30 percent. So that would lead one to believe that which we did is not going to solve the problem for the future. There's going to be additional base closures in 1995.

MR. MacNeil: So obviously this system worked on an issue on which the politics and the conflicting interests could, could be paralyzed and have gridlock, but there are many such issues today, and we just -- we led the program on one of them, the forest issue in the Northwest, and many citizens feel that the political system simply can't cope with them. I wonder as a result of your experience, after your experience as a congressman, your experience on this commission, are there wider applications today for the commission's system?

MR. COURTER: I think there is, Robin, but it seems to me that it should be in a narrow area where there is a clearly defined problem. It could be a social security problem. It could be a --

MR. MacNeil: That was used in the social security case, wasn't it, in the mid '80s?

MR. COURTER: There was a commission that made recommendations many of which were eventually then voluntarily adopted by Congress. This is the first commission that I know that, whose work is presumed to be correct, and unless Congress votes to overturn it, it becomes the law of the land. So it's a commission with real teeth. To answer your question, in those areas where there is demonstrative paralysis and gridlock, an institutional incapability of getting the job done, and Congress is willing to abdicate some of their responsibility and power as they voluntarily did in this case with the administration. A commission can cut through the gridlock and achieve some important cost savings for taxpayers in areas beyond base closings. One example, early in the process I received a telephone call from the Department of Energy, and they asked me if we could include Department of Energy facilities during our base closing deliberations. Of course I said well, thank you, no, our plate is quite full. But they are suffocating on infrastructure, and they are green with envy because the Department of Defense has found the mechanism to close down redundant and non- essential infrastructure facilities, so a base closing commission for the Department of Energy is something that I would endorse and get behind.

MR. MacNeil: Well, what about deficit cutting? There is widespread if not consensus certainly very wide agreement the, something serious needs to be done with the deficit. What is going to come out of the Congress is presumably going to be both painful politically and marginal in cutting the deficit. Is there a case for applying the commission's system to something as big and as explosive as that?

MR. COURTER: I would say, I mean, you're going to make a new institution of government and we do have a Congress. I think elected representatives should only in narrow areas create a commission with such broad-based powers as the Base Closing Commission. And there may be parts of the deficit that you would want to do that, but there's lots of gridlock in Washington. There's lots of problems that are difficult to address. There's lots of debates that seem to go on year after year on your program, and I think it would be irresponsible and an irresponsible abdication of elective authority to create a commission in every area where there is a difficult situation.

MR. MacNeil: Because it's, the commission's system is not really a healthy democratic advance but an admission that Congress can no longer make tough choices in some areas?

MR. COURTER: It's an admission of the institution's incapability to achieve and make very difficult decisions, because of obvious reasons. When you're charged with the responsibility of closing bases, individual members of Congress can frustrate the whole process. Powerful committee chairmen can make decisions such that Congress as a whole never really debates and votes on the issue. For years, when I was a member of Congress, when the administration and the Secretary of Defense would come forward with a group of recommended base closures, it was criticized as politically motivated, it was retaliation against my vote against Star Wars, for the B-1 bomber, or it was dead on arrival, or it was biased by region, and we're going to reject it. Finally Congress recognized that institutionally it couldn't get the job done. But to Congress's credit, they created an extraordinary method that should be only used sparingly and in certain circumstances to achieve that which they could not institutionally achieve themselves.

MR. MacNeil: How does the satisfaction of having done this job compare to what it was like being a Congressman?

MR. COURTER: Well, I, I, this was a more difficult job. There was more, more attention. There was more pressure, but it was a better job. I mean, it was a better job, because the results could be measured in no uncertain terms, that the, the time frame did not go on for decades, decisions could be made and will be implemented. So there was a much greater sense of accomplishment, of tangible, important results that had a compelling national requirement as chairman of this commission and as a 12-year member of the House of Representatives. There's a feeling of accomplishment here that frankly I did not get there.

MR. MacNeil: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Courter, for joining us.

MR. COURTER: Thank you very much. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, President Clinton proposed a plan to resolve the differences between environmentalists and the timber industry in the Northwest. Both sides criticized it, and this afternoon, the House and Senate passed President Clinton's jobs bill. It contains $1 billion for summer jobs and small business loans, among other things. It's a scaled down version of the President's economic stimulus plan which was killed by a Republican filibuster in the Senate in April. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight, but before we go, we'd like to welcome two new national underwriters. You'll notice their names in the credits at the top and bottom of the program, Archer Daniels Midland and New York Life. Both corporations have signed on to support the NewsHour for the next five years. They join PepsiCo, whose backing for the program continues this year. And we bid a grateful farewell to AT&T, which has supported the NewsHour generously from its beginnings in 1983. Together, these national underwriters pay for half the cost of this program. The other half comes from Public Broadcasting. We'll see you tomorrow night with Newsmaker interviews with South African President F.W. DeKlerk and ANC Leader Nelson Mandela. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.