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Document 46 of 92.

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APRIL 20, 1999, TUESDAY

SECTION: IN THE NEWS

LENGTH: 2650 words

HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF
THEODORE ROOSEVELT IV
BEFORE THE SENATE ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE
SUBJECT - THE LAND AND WATER CONSERVATION FUND

BODY:

Mr. Chairman, Senators, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Ted Roosevelt, and I am an investment banker, a Republican, a conservationist, and a rancher - in no particular order of preference. I serve on the Governing Council of The Wilderness Society and am Chair of the bipartisan League of Conservation Voters. I also serve on the Board of the Institute of the Environment of Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming and have numerous affiliations with other environmental advocacy groups, including Defenders of Wildlife. As a matter of personal commitment and family tradition, I have a deep and abiding interest in the protection of America's natural resources and public lands.
I am here to speak to you on an occasion of great moment. Today, you have the opportunity to honor the bipartisan intentions of Congress more than thirty years ago, when the members of this great body passed a groundbreaking bill, the Land and Water Conservation Fund. What a stunning act that was -- such a testament to the potential in this governing body to arrive at fair and pragmatic solutions. Now, all that is required for this Fund to serve its original purpose - a purpose which is more essential to the wellbeing of our nation than ever - is a simple commitment to its full and permanent funding.
It seems to me that you will need the answers to several questions in order to stand behind the LWCF: Why is it important? Do your constituents care? Will it do the job? Unfortunately, a divisiveness arises around environmental and land use issues that has little, if not nothing, to do with the answers to those important questions. I will, of course, propose some answers to those questions, but first I would like to take a moment to look at the divisiveness.
By the measure of our young country, this is an ancient argument: Whose land is it anyway? I have always taken some solace in the fact that Americans on both sides of the environmental divide (which seems to run somewhere near the course of the Mississippi or thereabouts) are so ferocious on this subject. No matter their agenda, we must acknowledge that Americans feel that "these lands are their lands."
As one of our great Western writers, Wallace Stegner, observed, it was the wilderness that transformed us into the people we are today. In facing the wilderness, however, not only was our identity as Europeans challenged, but so was our survival. Out of the wilderness, we forged both a new identity as a people and a prosperous future. Opportunity and danger were found in our wild places in equal measure. As a result, I think that our public discourse continues to be marked by a deep ambivalence toward the land that both threatened us and provided for us.William Ashworth, in discussing the legacy of our frontier mentality, wrote: "It has caused us to seriously undervalue raw materials and undeveloped land; undeveloped things are by definition beyond the frontier, things that belong to no one and are therefore free. In this context, restrictions on land development, logging, and mining are difficult to impose."
Nonetheless, in response to "cut and run" exploitation at the turn of the last century, we began to set aside and retain lands in public trust. This was the result of some extraordinary and visionary leadership. But it was also a direct response to what could be called a grassroots' movement that arose among the American people at the time.
In his book, Mountains without Handrails, Joseph L. Sax, a law professor and public land theorist, describes it this way: "The Yellowstone era was also the time of the Homestead and Desert Land Acts, when every American family was to have its share of the public domain free of monopolization by the rich. The application of that principle to the great scenic wonders could not be realized by granting a sequoia grove or Grand Canyon to each citizen. But is was possible to preserve the spectacular sites for the average citizen by holding them as public places to be enjoyed by all."
Paul Gates, the leading authority on the history of public lands in America, also reminds us that America's public lands include degraded and often tax-delinquent forests and watersheds that were virtually abandoned and prone to erosion and flooding. An offer by the Hoover Administration, for instance, to cede western range lands to the states found no takers because of the low value and cost of administering the land.
Protection from reckless exploitation, providing a home for abandoned lands, and the preservation of special places -- these were the motivations in the past for designating and protecting public lands. Today, we have new and even more pressing motivations, and these answer the first of our questions: Why are these lands important?
Or, as one of our Congressmen recently asked me: Haven't we set aside enough public land? It's a good question. And, while we should certainly be proud of what earlier Congresses and former Presidents accomplished for our nation, the answer is NO, we have not done enough. The public lands now in existence were set aside for purposes other than today's environmental needs, and, as they are now, they are not sufficient to the ecological tasks we are imposing on them. Some of our most magnificent national parks, for instance, are rich in scenery and poor in terms of biomass or biodiversity. This is nothing less than a tragedy and one that will have serious repercussions for all of us.
While many of our public lands were originally established for timber, mining, scenic values, and recreation, they have become, by default, our nation's primary strongholds for species conservation. As habitat declines in quality and quantity, species vanish forever, taking with them all the values they provide. These include the natural functioning of their ecosystems, which in turn provide clean air and water. These include free agricultural services, such as pollination, pest control, and the protection of arable land through the prevention of erosion and salinization. These values include valuable genetic lines of wild species to rehabilitate crop and livestock gene pools. These values include the origin of 57% of the 150 most prescribed drugs and potential cures for many diseases, including those that we are unleashing on the world through our disruption of natural habitats. In fact, the EPA's Science Advisory Board under the Bush Administration reported in 1990 that species extinction and habitat loss pose one of the greatest threats to the environment and human welfare.
Today, development pressures on open spaces are unrelenting, gobbling up land resources that, as you all should recognize, are vital to the continued health, both economic and environmental, of our nation. Seven thousand acres of land are lost every day to development. Our wild lands are becoming increasingly like islands, surrounded by "oceans" of towns, shopping malls, roads, people, development.
Over the last 20 years, a new scientific discipline, conservation biology, has emerged and has established several important principles for keeping ecosystems healthy and species and natural communities from going extinct. First, larger tracts of habitat can sustain more species and can better withstand unusual natural assaults, such as extended dry spells, flooding, or forest fires. Second, it is important to allow animal populations to expand and disperse in order to maintain their genetic viability. As it is unlikely that they will foray across long stretches of inhospitable terrain, closer habitat islands are better than those that are far removed. Third, habitat islands need to be linked by "corridors" of habitat to further aid animal dispersal and maintain healthy populations.

We also must recognize the need to maintain what are called nectar corridors along the migratory routes of our pollinators, which provide that free service for 75% of the world's staple crops and 90% of all flowering plants.
Today, by combining ecological research with computer mapping and analysis, we can make better choices about which lands will yield the most conservation benefit per acre and per dollar, thus improving the efficiency of programs like the LWCF. We have also learned that lands do not have to be declared completely off-limits in order to serve as effective conservation tools. Many recreation uses, and even a number of uses such as logging, can be compatible with the conservation of wild species and habitats, but as our human population increases, our need for recreation lands is stressing those that remain and risks degrading them.
In sum, our current stock of public lands simply cannot do it all. The lands are stressed to the maximum, and, I will note here, so too are the personnel of some of our most exemplary service providers, the men and women who care for our parklands and refuges.
The next question is: Do the American people care?
In 1998, of 148 state and local open space measures on the ballot, 124 were approved. That's a resounding 84% approval rating on measures which, collectively, committed over $5 billion in public revenues to preserving America's open spaces.Christine Todd Whitman, the distinguished Republican governor of New Jersey, has said:
"Few of our actions will affect future generations as much as the preservation of land today. Open spaces, including forests and farmlands, help purify the water we drink and the air we breathe. Open spaces provide habitat for wildlife, and a place for human recreation and refuge in a hectic world."
She is one of a large number of today's leaders, including the governor of my own state, Governor Pataki, who are stepping up to the plate to protect our natural heritage. Governor Whitman put her support for public lands to the test in last November's elections by championing a ballot measure committing $1 billion to conservation. It passed.
In the context of the overwhelming need for protecting open space and the broad support of the American people, we then turn to the third question: Will the Land and Water Conservation Fund do the job? A corollary to that question is: Why hasn't it done the job thus far?
As you know, when Congress created the Land and Water Conservation Fund in 1964, a portion of the revenues from federal offshore oil and gas leases, amounting to about $900 million a year, was earmarked for the Fund to purchase and protect "areas of natural beauty and unique recreational value." But Congress never spent all of the money for its intended purpose. Between 1987 and 1997, three out of every four dollars were spent elsewhere. During the same period, LWCF spending averaged just $230 million or 25% of the $900 million authorized to flow into the Fund. Congress did a little better in the early years of the Fund, but not much.
One of the principal motivations of this under-spending was to make the federal budget appear to be less out of balance. But the failure to take full advantage of the LWCF's potential has also been a result of insufficient commitment to the Fund's purpose in some comers of Congress. Senators, we can no longer afford that lack of commitment.
Despite operating with severely less funding than originally intended, the Land and Water Conservation Fund performed some small and large miracles for the American environment. This little known and, until recently, almost forgotten Fund was the invisible hand behind some of the most important and vital federal land acquisitions of the past three decades. On the Eastern seaboard, these include: the Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts, the New Jersey Pinelands, the expansion of the Florida Everglades, and the completion of the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. The Fund has preserved fisheries, wetlands, and wildlife habitats. The state-side portion, when it actually received any money, created scores of parks, soccer and baseball fields,community swimming pools, greenways and bikeways in all of our neighborhoods, including some of this nation's harshest urban settings.
Almost 7 million acres of land were purchased with LWCF funds.
This committee has an opportunity to advance hundreds of additional projects such as these. It is an opportunity that comes in a time of both enormous need and extensive public support.
This committee has before it several pieces of legislation dealing with this issue. Senators Landrieu and Murkowski have introduced the Conservation and Reinvestment Act; Senator Boxer, the Permanent Protection for America's Resources Act; and Senator Feinstein, the Public Land and Recreation Investment Act. In accordance with the legislative process, these bills are works in progress. In my view and that of many members of the environmental community, there are four elements essential to the final legislation.
First, that legislation must permanently remove the LWCF from the financial sleight of hand that, for far too long, limited its effectiveness. 1999 is the year to take LWCF off-budget once and for all.
Second, the LWCF must be fully funded. After years of diverting as much as 75% of the intended money out of LWCF, partial reparations are not good enough. The original bipartisan intentions of Congress in 1964 should be honored by funding LWCF at the full $900 million level.
Third, the LWCF should enter the next century unencumbered by new restrictions on how it operates. The LWCF isn't broken, and there is no need to fix it. Those who are genuinely committed to its success will not, with one hand, finally give the LWCF the financial resources it needs, while, with the other hand, they take away its effectiveness by adding new and needless restrictions on how the Fund works. Why hamstring 30 years of success?
Fourth, there should be no incentives for new offshore drilling leases.
S. 25 would limit the Land and Water Conservation Fund on the federal side to the purchase of existing inholdings with exceptions only approved by an Act of Congress. The bill would also require that two- thirds of all LWCF dollars be spent east of the state of Texas. It further restricts the current fund for any single federal or state grant project at $5 million without further authorization.
Have there been flagrant abuses of the LWCF fund which need to be addressed? No.
Have Western Senators and Members of Congress requested the use of LWCF funds for purchases of lands west of the 100th meridian? Indeed, they have.
And don't the authorizing committees currently have the ability, to pass authorization for projects, if they choose to do so? Yes.
The pressing needs of today are, in large measure, the result of the unmet conservation needs of the past twenty years, caused in part by the prolonged and substantial under-funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. An economist in the Wall Street Journal recently described what he called "the dinosaurs" of the old economy this way: "They still make decisions that systematically destroy their strategic assets in the interests of short-term profit." I know, Senators, that you would be loath to be called dinosaurs. I urge you, therefore, to make a commitment to invest in the strategic value of our national resources and environmental health. We can begin by reversing the under-funding of the LWCF on a permanent basis.
I urge the members of this committee to forward to the Senate legislation that will fully and permanently fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, while refusing to encumber the Fund with needless new restrictions. In closing, I offer you the words of my great grandfather.
To waste, or destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.
Thank you.
END

LOAD-DATE: April 21, 1999

Document 46 of 92.


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