Environmental Head Count : Legislators have chance to back up their talk by killing two bills

Last month, in honor of Earth Day and in an effort to restore the Republicans’ battered image on environmental issues, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) toured the Atlanta Zoo and announced, “I believe deeply in preserving the environment.” Gingrich’s newfound enthusiasm for wildlife and wilderness, further evidenced by his recent appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live” with an assortment of reptiles, birds and other critters, springs directly from the realization by Republican leaders that many Americans appear to be profoundly uncomfortable with the assault on environmental protections launched by the GOP-dominated Congress.

This month, Gingrich and his colleagues in the House and Senate will have the opportunity to demonstrate just how deeply they value the natural environment. Two bills that would diminish federal protection of wilderness lands, to the benefit of extractive industries like logging and mining, will offer an early test of the depth of their environmental conversion.

The Federal Lands Forest Health Protection and Restoration Act contains the first assault. This measure, introduced by Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), would do anything but protect and restore forests on federal lands. Instead, the bill would make permanent the so-called “salvage rider” that Republicans attached to a bill subsequently signed by President Clinton last July to aid flood victims in California and survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing. The rider requires the government to allow logging of federally owned trees--some of them 800 to 1,000 years old--that have been damaged by fire, wind, disease or insects. This salvage logging is exempt from court review, even though it has sometimes involved cutting healthy old-growth trees on the assumption that they might become diseased. The salvage rider expires in December; Craig’s bill, which could face its first committee test this week, would extend this environmentally destructive practice indefinitely.

The National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act is no less cynical. This measure, sponsored by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), passed the House last month and is now before the Senate. The bill elevates hunting, fishing and trapping to equal standing with conservation as central purposes of the nation’s 508 wildlife refuges. These activities have long been permitted in the refuges but they are necessarily secondary to the goal of conservation and sanctuary. In contrast to refuges, national parks hold tourism as a central purpose and national forests accommodate multiple uses, including logging, hunting and recreation. Equally troubling, by making Congress’ role superior to that of the Fish and Wildlife Service in designating future refuges, Young’s bill elevates politics over science in judging environmental protection.

By acting quickly to reject these two destructive bills, Senate Republicans can validate the GOP’s new claims to environmental stewardship.