Really, it's just silly if anyone had "hope" that Dirk Kempthorne would improve things at Interior, vis-a-vis corporate rape and pillage of public lands. Nevertheless, the New York Times is surprised:
Dirk Kempthorne’s arrival in Washington as secretary of the interior raised hope among conservationists that he would moderate the Bush administration’s aggressive search for oil and gas in some of the country’s most environmentally sensitive lands. This has not happened.
But the reason they ran the editorical is not that they're "Shocked. Shocked!!", but rather to draw attention to a lawsuit filed by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) against drilling leases on public lands in the West.
Cross-posted at ePluribusMedia
Teddy Roosevelt, whose Republican Presidency saw the birth of the National Wildlife Refuges and other early conservation measures, has presumably been turning over in his grave for decades over how the GOP has been treating wild nature. Now, a mainly Republican hunters organization has taken the practically unprecedented (for them) step of filing suit against the Feds.
The TRCP highlights the following quote from Roosevelt (also known for trust-busting) to explain what they're about:
"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at least knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
A great quote for all of us to keep in mind, no? Yeah. Of course! So, enough philosophy and on to the lawsuit news.
THE TRCP LAWSUIT
People who are really hunters aren't content with NRA-style laws to protect their guns. They want adequate habitat and wildlife to enable them to "get away from it all", and to shoot something other than their "friends". (Lest we think Cheney-style put-and-take shooting is actual hunting.)
From TRCP's press release:
Specifically, the TRCP is protesting the Bureau of Land Management’s authorization of 2,000 new oil and gas wells, along with 1,000 miles of road and 1,000 miles of pipeline, in an area known as the Atlantic Rim.
Under the recent BLM action, energy development would come despite the federal government’s admission that "the natural setting would be converted to an industrialized setting by development" for multiple generations and that "implementation of the [project] would have adverse impact to suitable habitat for many wildlife species," including iconic big game species such as mule deer, elk and pronghorn antelope. (See Final Environmental Impact Statement, Atlantic Rim Project Area.)
The TRCP contends that the BLM is addressing neither the needs of sportsmen nor the fish and wildlife that populate the Atlantic Rim. The area is primarily used for hunting, wildlife viewing, grazing and pleasure driving – all activities that will be diminished by development.
So the hunters are mad. That's right, and most of the membership of the TRCP are Republicans - much like Trout Unlimited, which played a strong role in defeating Pombo's destructive "update" of the 1872 Mining Act tacked on the Budget Reconciliation in the fall of 2005. You'd think these yahoos would have learned! But, this is Dick Cheney's bailiwick (Kempthorne - and Karl Rove - notwithstanding), and I can't recall the 4th-branch quail-shooter ever having been described as a "good listener". The Times puts it this way:
That the partnership is now going to court shows how distasteful the administration’s public lands policies have become and how little they have changed since Vice President Dick Cheney, in his notorious energy report, ordered up a full-court press for domestic oil and gas resources regardless of the environmental consequences. Like other conservation groups, the partnership has never disputed the need to develop supplies of natural gas, nor has it objected to responsible development undertaken at a measured pace with due regard for other values, including the protection of wildlife.
What drove the partnership over the edge and into court was the sheer one-sidedness of the administration’s approach, as well as its reckless disregard for the law, and if that does not get Mr. Kempthorne’s attention, nothing will.
TRCP spokesman, George Belinda, says:
"Based on wildlife losses due to energy development experienced elsewhere, such as those near Pinedale, Wyoming, TRCP contends that BLM must establish pre-project commitments to exactly how fish and wildlife will be sustained during development," said Belinda. "The Atlantic Rim decision offers no such assurance, and the deliberate conversion of this important area for wildlife to an industrialized, single use is unacceptable."
OK. There's issues on public lands. Is that all? Nope!! The property rights brand of Republicans, at least some of 'em, are getting a bit agitated, too.
SPLIT ESTATE
Much Western land came into private ownership under the Homestead Act. Under the provisions of that law, the homesteaders only got the "surface" land. Minerals and energy rights under their lands remained in the public domain, and so available for corporate exploitation. So in addition to those POed about what's happening to public lands, there's a bunch of ranchers getting riled up over energy companies running roughshod over their home turf.
Not long ago, I had the chance to meet Pete McCloskey when he visited Santa Fe. He's my hero, because he pummeled Pombo so thoroughly in last year's CA-11 primary, the "cowboy congressman" (his family owns a feedlot, fer chrissakes!!) couldn't recover, and ultimately lost his seat. Anyhow, Pete introduced me to Tweeti Blancett, a Republican rancher here in New Mexico, who's fighting tooth and nail over all the damage done to her family ranch by energy companies extracting gas from under it:
And that rankles Tweeti Blancett, a rancher who calls herself a "cowgirl" and sits on New Mexico's Livestock Board and whose husband, Linn, is a director of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association. Linn's great-grandfather, a scout for the U.S. Army, came into the San Juan Basin with Kit Carson in the 1870s, and the family has run cattle here ever since. "If you want to see what the West will look like, take a good look at this valley," Tweeti Blancett told me on the morning of December 8, 2003, as she loaded a PowerPoint program at her Aztec, New Mexico, office. Five days earlier she had given the same "preview" to the Sierra Club, the very outfit that has called her profession "welfare ranching" and tried to get cows off public range.
...
But the devastation chronicled on Blancett's computer screen had been caused by gas and oil companies, not cattle. As hideous as it was, what impressed me more was that it had been sufficient to drive her into the arms of people she loathed. "An unholy alliance," she calls it. Tweeti Blancett is about as Republican as you get, even in New Mexico. In 2000 she had been a campaign coordinator for George W. Bush. During two senate races (though not the last) she had stumped for U.S. Senator Pete Domenici.
So, what's she riled up about, in particular?
Most of the oil has been pumped out of the Rocky Mountain West. What's left is gas—conventional and coal-bed methane. With the latter, a technology barely 15 years old and therefore an experiment on public resources, you have to bust up the coal seam and pump out groundwater contaminated with a witch's brew of toxins and carcinogens. Ranchers aren't safe even if they graze their own land because, in virtually all cases, subsurface mineral rights were sold or leased to gas and oil companies at least half a century ago. The companies routinely drill in front yards and backyards. A recent study reveals that if you have a gas well within 500 feet of your house, your property value declines 22 percent.
"These guys made $4.5 billion in San Juan County last year," continued Blancett. "But they barely do any site restoration; they want everything. And in the San Juan Basin there are three BLM enforcement agents to cover 35,000 wells. We either have droughts or gully washers, so when you disturb desert soil and don't revegetate, you lose it. This whole county is a disaster area. Our water is polluted; our air is polluted; our ground is polluted. They've ruined our ranch. With $4.5 billion coming out of one county in one year, New Mexico ought to be the richest state, not one of the poorest."
This is how BushCo Republicans treat their friends! It's hardly any wonder that they're losing 'em left and right. And the public lands hunters (a significant demographic throughout the west) is steamed, too.
These issues, like those property rights questions being raised by ranchers and Chamber of Commerce types against the Border Wall along the Rio Grande, are wedge issues. If the Dems have any sense, they'll make the most of issues like these to strengthen gains (look at the Rocky Mountain Governors now!!) made throughout the West. Looking at the top Presidential contenders, I don't see that these things are on their radar screens at all. That's way beyond my control: But these issues could be helpful in wresting a few more House seats free from the Republicans in the next go-round (like AZ-01, NM-01 and WY-AL).
So, yeah. Theodore Roosevelt may be turning over in his grave. But a significant sector of Republicans who value his legacy have stirred, and are starting to assert themselves. TR's spirit has been set loose on the land, and this is not good news for the likes of message-spinners like Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie.
Better late than never. But there's still quite a bit of time for the Cheney energy plan to set destructive forces loose upon the land. So vigilance will continue to be necessary. Meanwhile - welcome to the fold, TRCP, and thanks for joining the fray by filing this suit.