Forest Service plan would sell prime recreational land near Boulder

By Karen Romer

Looking west from Wendy Redal's backyard, the snow-covered slopes of Eldora Ski Area come into view. The pine and fir covered face of Mount Pisgah lies to the southwest and the brown slopes of Sugarloaf Mountain to the north.

The beautiful, unobstructed views from her home in the Sugar Loaf community are what first attracted Redal and her husband to this area. But the views may not be unobstructed for long under a federal plan to sell public land.

"You just don't expect that the public land around you might be sold," Redal said.

Hundreds of acres of public land could be sold near Sugarloaf Mountain (Photo/Wendy Worrall Redal)

Redal's home sits on a long, skinny strip of land sandwiched between two parcels of adjacent Roosevelt National Forest. If the Bush administration's proposal to sell 300,000 acres of U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service land is passed, about 720 acres in the Sugar Loaf community may be on the chopping block, including the open space next to Redal's home.

Each of the Forest Service's nine regional offices were notified by the Washington D.C. office to select parcels of land that are isolated, difficult and expensive to manage, said John Bustos Jr., public affairs officer for the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Regional Office.

Bustos cited another item on the list of criteria – parcels that are surrounded by private land. Public and private lands are often intermixed in national forests, which makes them more difficult to manage and gives rise to access issues, Bustos said. This criterion fits the Sugar Loaf community's layout.

Residents, recreational groups, land planning organizations and Boulder County Commissioners strongly oppose the Forest Service's proposal. At question is why certain lands in Boulder County, which have obvious recreational and scenic value and are important wildlife and access areas, have been singled out and what will happen to these lands if the proposal goes through.

The Bush administration hopes to raise $800 million by selling isolated parcels of national forest land, which will be used to fund rural schools and county road projects nationwide. Set to expire Sept. 30, 2006, President Bush's proposed 2007 budget would extend the Secure Rural and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 for another five years.

The Rural Schools Act offsets some of the financial burdens that rural counties face due to decreased federal timber sales. Historically these counties received a cut of timber sale profits and have come to rely on federal subsidies to fund rural school and road projects.

In Colorado, more than 23,000 acres in 11 national forests are being considered. Of the 137,000 acres in Roosevelt and Arapaho National Forests in Boulder County, 2,300 acres or 1.7 percent would be sold, according to Mike Johnson, lands and mineral specialist with the Boulder Ranger District.

About 600 residents live in the Sugar Loaf community, which is located in the foothills several miles west of Boulder and covers 19 square miles of forested land that is sprinkled with homes.

"There are a couple of mountain subdivisions, but most people in this area live on several acres of land," Redal said.

Land in the Sugar Loaf community is more fragmented than any other area managed by the Boulder Ranger District, according to the Forest Service's land and resource management website.

"So what they're saying, that it is really fragments of public land, is true," said Redal, noting that this may be one reason why so many acres in the Sugar Loaf area have been singled out.

Redal and her husband own three acres, a long, thin stretch of land about 150 feet wide that is a former mining claim. Many of her neighbors' homes are similarly situated.

The Redal family's home sits amid fragmented parcels of public and private land (Photo/Wendy Worrall Redal)

"It's an old land-use layout in terms of the mixture of private and public lands," Redal said.

"It's true that there's a focus on former mining claims or strips," said Pat Shanks, chairman of PLAN-Boulder County, a nonprofit political action group in Boulder. Perhaps these strips have a little less value to the Forest Service in terms of pristine open space, Shanks said.

Thousands of former mining claims dot the mountains west of Boulder. Under the Mining Act of 1872, prospectors who discovered gold and other valuable surface minerals could stake claims for these deposits and buy the land for $2.50 or $5.00 an acre. Many small mining towns, including Ward, Magnolia and Sugar Loaf, sprung up in Colorado as a result. Many of these former mining claims are now privately owned.

Bob Ruston, a long-time resident of the Sugar Loaf community, calls these former mining claims "picnic spots." These strips of land, which range in shape from rectangular to long, skinny stretches, and are a good place to get out of your car, spread a blanket and have a picnic on a beautiful summer day, Ruston said.

In 1968 Ruston bought three acres from a friend and built his first home here. Several years after moving to the Sugar Loaf area Ruston discovered Dream Canyon.

"It just knocked my socks off," said Ruston, recalling seeing Dream Canyon for the first time. "It's so vast and crennelated."

Dream Canyon, a popular rock-climbing area above Boulder Falls, is slated to be sold by the Forest Service (Photo/Rockclimbing.com)

Dream Canyon is one of the parcels currently proposed for sale by the Forest Service.

The Dream Canyon trailhead is a 5-minute walk from Redal's home and a short distance from Ruston's place. Ruston owns three plots of land, two of which lie several hundred feet uphill from North Boulder Creek, which winds through the steep canyon walls of Dream Canyon before cascading down Boulder Falls where it meets Middle Boulder Creek.

Tucked just off Boulder Canyon, Dream Canyon has numerous bolted routes and steep granite buttresses that make it a popular climbing area. Ruston has talked to climbers ranging from adventurous youths to spry retirees who come to Dream Canyon from as far away as Europe and Asia.
"Often on the 4th of July there are about 200 people (at Dream Canyon), Ruston said.

The Access Fund, a Boulder-based organization committed to maintaining and preserving public rock climbing sites, has identified Dream Canyon and Bell Buttress, a towering wall located just beyond Boulder Falls, on Forest Service maps. In their letter to the Forest Service, the Access Fund requested that any parcels used for climbing, biking, hiking and other recreational purposes be taken off the list. The organization cited the Forest Service's proposal as a short-term fix that would take thousands of acres of recreational lands and natural areas out of the public's hands.

Like Dream Canyon, several of the identified parcels are located within 'high-use recreation areas,' according to the Forest Service's website. These include Eldora Ski Area and Boulder Creek, Caribou and Sugar Loaf geographic areas.

Two 240-acre parcels in the Sugar Loaf community are located in the Boulder Falls vicinity, which is designated as a critical wildlife corridor and an environmental conservation area under Boulder County's Comprehensive Plan.

Just one and one-half miles past Boulder Falls along the cliffs of Boulder Canyon is golden eagle territory. Golden eagles nest in the upper cliffs of several popular rock climbing areas, including Eagle Rock, Security Risk and Blob Rock.

Other areas in Boulder County are also targeted. Four parcels are located in the Magnolia Road area south of Boulder Creek, a popular mountain biking trail and an important migration corridor for elk that winter in the area. Another parcel is located in Eldora near one of the entrances to the Indian Peaks Wilderness. And several parcels abut land crossed by the Peak-to-Peak Highway and Caribou Ranch Open Space.

Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., introduced a bill in May 2005, H.R. 2110, to protect the 'open space characteristics' of lands in and adjacent to Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests along Colorado's Front Range. The bill is now undergoing hearings and testimony in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In the bill Rep. Udall outlines several key reasons why land along Colorado's Front Range needs to be protected. First, lands in and adjacent to Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests provide important wildlife habitat and numerous recreational opportunities. In addition, these open spaces are vital to Colorado's communities, not only for their scenic beauty, but also for their economic impact. As the population continues to grow along the Front Range and more land is lost to development, open space in Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests will be increasingly used for recreational purposes.

Determining which parcels are on the Forest Service's proposed list is challenging.

"They (Boulder Ranger District) weren't being uncooperative, but they weren't going out of their way to tell us where those parcels were," Shanks said.

So PLAN-Boulder County made their own maps based on data they downloaded from the Forest Service's website. These maps, which are posted on PLAN-Boulder County's website, list the location, size and significance of the public lands in Boulder County.

"In terms of actual boundaries, it's been hard to figure out," said Redal, explaining that she had trouble using the mapping program on the Forest Service's website and difficulty locating the parcels within the Sugar Loaf community.

The act of selling public lands to fund a federal program has been sharply criticized by citizens in Boulder County and politicians at local, state and national levels.

Sens. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and Ken Salazar, D-Colo., both oppose the Bush administration's plan to sell public lands to fund a federal program.

"I continue to be very concerned about the Administration's proposal to sell off pieces of America's permanent heritage of public lands as part of a short-term budget issue," said Sen. Salazar in a press release issued Mar. 29, 2006.

Sens. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., coauthors of the Secure Rural and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000, introduced legislation to reinstate the program at its current funding level without resorting to land sales.

Boulder County Commissioners Ben Pearlman, Tom Mayer and Will Toor cited the proposal as being fiscally irresponsible in their letter to Dale Bosworth, forest service chief. 'The federal government has an obligation to live within its means, not sell off a permanent public asset to pay current operating costs of government.'

There is also widespread disapproval among citizens, politicians and local organizations about the Forest Service's process for selecting which public lands would be sold.

The regional offices received quick directions and very little input about how to go about the process, said Jim Maxwell, media relations officer for the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Regional Office.

"Our lands people at the regional office sat down with maps and determined where isolated and scattered parcels are located in relation to forest service lands," Maxwell said. "Our people were only given a few days to do that."

Maxwell agrees that there's been a lot of controversy over the proposed bill.

"It's facing a very uncertain future," he said.

Agricultural Undersecretary Rey contends that the Rural Schools Act was never meant to be permanent. Legislation was passed to help rural counties transition from relying on federal timber sales to finding other economic sources to generate revenues. Rey estimates that the Forest Service will only have to sell about 175,000 acres out of the proposed 300,000 acres to meet its goal of $800 million.

The first cut of national forest lands proposed for sale was included in the President's Feb. 2006 budget proposal and published in the Federal Registry on Feb. 25, 2006. A public comment period, originally set from Feb. 28 to Mar. 30, was recently extended until May 1 to give the public an additional month to comment on the controversial proposal.

"So far we have received around 4,000 comments," said Undersecretary Rey during a telenews conference with the press on Mar. 29, 2006.

Though Rey didn't know the exact breakdown of the letters, he estimated that at least three-fourths of the letters are against the proposal.

"Lots of people we're hoping will comment on specific parcels," said Maxwell so the Forest Service can revisit the list and make necessary changes.

After the comment period ends, the Forest Service will take the comments they receive into consideration while forming their final list. If Congress approves the proposal, they will get very specific about how many parcels will be sold and the method in which they will be sold, Maxwell explained.

The Boulder Ranger District will not speculate on how the Forest Service would implement the proposal until it is given that authority by Congress. Based on the proposal submitted to Congress, the Forest Service would complete an environmental analysis, Johnson said. An environmental analysis is used to learn about important issues and concerns, find alternatives for completing the project and determine the environmental impacts of those alternatives.

It's uncertain exactly how the land would be sold, though the Forest Service says that the parcels would be sold at fair market value as required by law. Fair market value is determined through an appraisal process based on the value of similar properties.

Historically the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have conveyed lands that are difficult or uneconomical to manage through land exchanges rather than sales, according to the Colorado Bureau of Land Management's website.

Under the Bush administration's proposal, this policy would change. Not only would it be more difficult for Boulder County to acquire open space through land swaps, selling national forest lands would result in fragmented ownership patterns – something Boulder Parks and Open Space has worked for years to correct.

Based on a Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement completed in 1986, Boulder County Commissioners decided it was in the county's best interest to acquire all lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. As Boulder County's population continues to grow and push outwards toward the foothills, the county must deal with increased residential development, right-of-way issues and pending Recreation and Public Purposes Act applications.

The Recreation and Public Purposes Act, administered by the Bureau of Land Management, authorizes state and local governments to purchase land at low costs for recreational and public purposes. Under the act, government entities can purchase up to 640 acres per year for recreational uses, such as parks and campgrounds, and another 640 acres for public purposes, such as municipal facilities and schools.

The Bureau of Land Management has agreed to several land exchanges with Boulder County, which involves small tracts of land, namely old mining claims, being exchanged for lands that benefit the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Land exchanges and private conservation easements have created more cohesive patterns of ownership and improved Boulder County's ability to effectively manage its open space program.

During the first exchange, which took place in March 2003, Boulder County acquired 705 acres of public land and the federal government received two parcels, a 165-acre parcel in Boulder County and a 484-acre parcel in Teller County.

In the Forest Service's Feb. 28, 2006 posting on the Federal Register, the Forest Service admits that it hasn't surveyed many of the selected parcels for 'natural or cultural resources specific to this proposal.' This raises the question of who would be responsible for surveying and assessing the land if it's sold.

Ruston estimates it would cost around $100,000 to $200,000 just to survey the land around his place. The Forest Service could send out their own surveying team to each identified parcel, but that process could take years, Ruston said. Instead Ruston surmises the Forest Service will probably leave the surveying process up to the prospective property owner.

"If they do a slipshod job and just draw lines on the map, they'll leave it up to the person who buys it," Ruston said.

This could be an expensive task. While Boulder County Commissioners paid for the surveying and appraisal costs under its land exchange agreement with the Bureau of Land Management, it would be far too expensive for the county to purchase isolated parcels of Forest Service lands at fair market value, especially if appraisal costs are heaped on.

The Boulder County Commissioners stated in their letter to Forest Service Chief Bosworth that working with the federal government to preserve open space through land swaps is an inefficient process. 'The costs of closing on federal land, including survey and appraisal costs, will significantly reduce any return to the Federal treasury,' the Boulder County Commissioners stated in their letter.

Since the passage of the Rural Schools Act in 1999, $1.9 billion of federal funds have been allocated to eligible counties. By 2013, the only guaranteed payments that these counties would receive would be 25 percent of timber sales from forest revenues. The payments will be capped, gradually adjusted downwards over the next five years and phased out by 2013, according to information on the Forest Service's website.

During 2000 to 2006 allocated funds were distributed to counties where Forest Service lands are located. If the Rural Schools Act is extended, these payments would instead go to counties that have been most affected by reduced timber sales.

Though Forest Service lands in Colorado would account for 7.2 percent of the proposed 300,000 acres, only 1.67 percent of the allocated funds would reach the state. And Boulder County wouldn't receive any of these funds.

If the public land next to Redal's home were sold, the property value of her home would decrease. But Redal isn't bothered so much about this aspect. Her main concern is that she'd lose the open space surrounding her home and the beautiful views she loves.

"So this is what President Bush wants to sell – negligible pieces of land with no scenic value," said Redal, with irony in her voice while gazing upward at the steep, creviced walls of Dream Canyon.

Babbitt Boasts of Boulder on Book Tour

By Felicia Russell

Praising the Open Space plan, former Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt said that Boulder has become a hub of discussion on land use planning in the West.

Babbitt, a member of President Clinton's cabinet for eight years, spoke to faculty and students Sept. 23 at the University of Colorado about the historic and future roll of the national government in land use planning as part of a tour to promote his new book "Cities in the Wilderness: A new vision of land use in America."

Bruce Babbitt, President Clinton's Interior Secretary from 1993 to 2001. (Photo/Center of the American West)

"Land use planning has been reduced to traffic design and the location of community facilities," said Babbit. The United States fails to do land use planning on a large enough scale and has lost sight of what is urban and what is wilderness. However, he says that there is hope in communities like Boulder that have begun to think about curbing sprawl.

The common attitude among politicians is that land use planning is a local issue, he said, but "the fact is, land use planning in the U.S. has always been a national issue." Canals, railroads, levees, interstates and dams are all federally funded projects. Babbitt pointed out that such projects often promote economic growth and development but can also result in large-scale ecological deterioration.

"Building of dams and development was the beginning of the death of the Mississippi Delta," Babbitt said. Two centuries of flood control in the Mississippi watershed has reduced the amount of sand and silt that the river carries from the center of the country out into the Gulf of Mexico. And channeling has caused the remaining sediment load to be shunted over the continental shelf.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Web site says early attempts to train the river caused the massive 1927 flood which damaged 11 million acres of farmland. And research by scientists at the University of Memphis Meeman Biological Field Station support claims that channeling and other flood control measures contributed to the 1993 flood. New reports say that the impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita was multiplied because Louisiana's shrunken coastal wetlands couldn't absorb the storm surges.

"We need to struggle toward a kind of higher vision," said Babbitt; one that is more holistic and better able to prevent disasters like the floods in New Orleans.

According to Babbitt, such a vision stipulates that all federal highway funding require states to plan with ecosystems in mind and set aside open space, and that all federal water projects be accompanied by plans to protect the health of surrounding plants, animals and ecological services.

Writing new laws is not part of his plan. Rather, he envisions changing the way that Americans value and interact with their environment—a deepening of the conservation ethic that Teddy Roosevelt practiced.

Land use planning, said Babbit, is the "major issue this century for those of us who are concerned about the environment." He urged people faced with a new shopping mall or highway to use the political power of the community to say "No," then negotiate with developers to ensure sustainable and environmentally-sound building practices.

Grassroots activism is vital to protecting ecosystems in the current political climate, he said. And urged the audience to be persistent in their efforts.

"Not in this session of Congress. Not under this president." But, said Babbit, "the moment of change will come."

Parks Project Unveils Mongolia's Natural Treasures

By Wendy Worrall Redal

Even the most well-traveled vagabonds have likely never heard of Altai Tavaan Bogd National Park. Tucked away on the far western fringe of Mongolia, near the juncture of Kazakhstan, China and Siberia, lies a one and half million-acre reserve where glaciated peaks rise more than 14,000 feet above some of the most pristine lakes in the world.

Altai Tavaan Bogd National Park (Photo/Ted Wood)

The park's forests and tundra are home to many species, some endangered or rare, including snow leopards, wolves, argali mountain sheep, ibex and elk. Golden eagles soar above the mountain valleys, where nomadic herders train and use them in hunting, as ethnic Kazahks have done for centuries.

Several outfitters in Mongolia offer visitors the chance to explore this remote backcountry on horseback, stopping to hike through flower-filled meadows and along rivers tumbling with glacial till from ice-bound slopes above. Travelers may be invited to share a cup of mare's milk tea, Mongolia's most common form of hospitality, inside a local family's yurt, the traditional round, felt-covered dwelling most herder families call home.

Traditional Kazakh eagle hunter (Photo/Ted Wood)

Few tourists, even among "adventure travelers," have been privileged to see the Tavaan Bogd peaks, or Mongolia's other magnificent national parks, including Lake Khovsgol, perhaps the clearest lake on the planet. Only a few hundred thousand visitors come to Mongolia each year. That's changing, however, as word is getting out about the country's dramatic natural gifts.

That growing awareness, translated into more tourism that focuses on Mongolia's unique landscapes, may be the key to protecting Mongolia's threatened natural ecosystems. It's the intent at the heart of a novel project launched by two journalists, both alumni of CEJ programs, who are working to provide maps, postcards and interpretive guides for Mongolia's national parks. The goal is to enhance visitors' experiences through education and information while returning profits through the sale of such materials to conservation efforts in the parks.

Writer Jeremy Schmidt and photojournalist Ted Wood, longtime friends and professional colleagues, founded Conservation Ink in 2003, a not-for-profit organization based in Jackson Hole, Wyo., as an avenue to "give back" to the world's threatened natural places they've built most of their careers covering, Wood said.

Their mission is to help developing countries protect their parks through funds made available from publications produced by Conservation Ink, not unlike the support for U.S. national parks that's provided by non-profit associations that return profits from visitor center book and gift shops back to the parks.

Wood was a Ted Scripps Fellow in 2001-02, and both Wood and Schmidt attended the 2001 Scripps Howard Institute on the Environment. It was during the Institute, in fact, that the first germ of their idea began to flower. Mongolia's then-environment minister, and D. Galbadrakh, director of the Mongolian Society for Environmental Education, were also attending the Institute. Wood and Schmidt struck up conversations with them, and learned of Mongolia's needs. Their imaginations began to take flight, and two years later, Conservation Ink was born.

Mongolia is Conservation Ink's pilot project. Like many developing countries, Mongolia's natural beauty and environmental health are threatened by a lack of financial resources. Struggling economically after the demise of the Soviet Union, the Mongolian government is looking to industrialization and resource development as paths to a vital market economy and brighter economic future. Often, however, exploiting natural resources comes at the cost of destroying natural landscapes and fragile ecosystems.

Lake Khovsgol, in northern Mongolia, is one of the clearest, cleanest lakes in the world (Photo/Ted Wood)

Wood acknowledged that while Mongolia's government has made an impressive effort so far in setting aside land for protection, about 13 percent of its total area, the economic pull to go in the other direction is strong. Parks have to be able to pay for themselves if they are to survive.

That's where Conservation Ink comes in. If the group's effort can help prove that a sustainable tourism economy is possible, much of the battle will be won. To make that happen, though, people have to know about places like Altai Tavaan Bogd and Lake Khovsgol National Parks.

Those are the first two Mongolian destinations that Conservation Ink has produced materials for. With a seed grant from National Geographic, Wood and Schmidt took several field research trips to Mongolia, horsetrekking with local guides to experience, study and photograph the parks. They also spent time in the capital, making connections that would lead to the opening of an Ulaanbaatar-based sourcing and distribution office for Conservation Ink.

They brought the first sets of map-guides and postcards back to Mongolia to distribute in the fall of 2004, where they are being sold to park visitors and in shops in Ulaanbaatar. CI is also connecting with tour operators, so they can make the materials available to their clients. The publications will help build regional tourism economies, where infrastructure is also a problem, as well as spreading the word (and images) of Mongolia worldwide through sales over the Internet.

Schmidt and Wood are actively pursuing the additional financial support CI needs to continue its Mongolia work and expand into other countries. Other donors, including USAID, have come on board as word of the non-profit's mission meets a receptive audience.

The initial maps and postcards produced by Wood and Schmidt are gorgeous. The text is enlightening and the photography stunning. Take a first-hand look at them on Conservation Ink's web site, www.conservationink.org, where you can also read in greater detail about the organization and its activities.

Look for an update in the fall edition of CEJ News/Views on Conservation Ink's continuing work in Mongolia during the summer of 2005.

Now 100, Forest Service Takes a Long Look Back

By Emily Cooper

"…where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question will always be decided from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run."

Forest Service chief Gifford Pinchot's oft-quoted exhortation to the agency he created is the bedrock on which the agency's "multiple use" mission was founded. One hundred years after its founding, the service reflects on the past century in a new documentary entitled "The Greatest Good."

Two Forest Service administrators and one of the filmmakers were on hand April 13 for a screening of the film on the University of Colorado's Boulder campus. Not merely a celebration of the agency's accomplishments, the film is illuminated by the bitter conflicts of the past century over forest fires, the impacts of recreation and—perhaps most contentious of all—logging in the national forests. Without offering any neat answers, the film asks its audience, What really is the greatest good? And for whom?

"We didn't want to make a film that just said, 'Oh boy, Forest Service, aren't you great,'" filmmaker Dave Steinke said during the panel discussion following the film. "Because we wouldn't want to watch that, and I'd assume you [would] not either."

"Multiple use" means that public lands should satisfy a variety of needs of the American people, from conserving open space to generating income. To that end, the 1960 Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act directed the Forest Service to manage the lands for recreation, grazing, timber, water and fish and wildlife—a tall order, and one that has probably never been met to anyone's satisfaction. But even if the act codified the concept of multiple use, the roots of the ideal go back to the agency's founding document, a letter ostensibly written by Agriculture Secretary James Wilson to Gifford Pinchot, but which was most likely authored by Pinchot himself. It was in that letter, written in February 1905 at the founding of the modern Forest Service, that Pinchot's famous "greatest good" quote was recorded.

It was not an idea that came out of nowhere for the man the film called "America's first homegrown forester."

Pinchot came from money, with a family that sent him to study forestry in Europe and later bankrolled the first forestry school in the United States at Yale University. He also had connections, one of his best-known friends being Theodore Roosevelt. Both Pinchot and Roosevelt chafed at the actions of the "robber barons" who were, in their eyes, raping the land of its natural resources for their own financial gain. At the same time, the Interior Department's General Land Office couldn't give federally owned land away fast enough. In response to the two pressures of privatization and exploitation of the public lands, Roosevelt and Pinchot began setting aside forest reserves.

While two previous presidents—Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland—had created some forest reserves, Teddy Roosevelt outdid them many times over. In his second term alone, he set aside upwards of 80 million acres. In 1907 Congress responded to his zeal with the Fulton Amendment, an appropriations rider that took away the presidential power to reserve forest lands. Roosevelt signed the bill, but not before adding another 16 million acres to the national forest system—lands that were designated by Pinchot and his assistant, who circled them on a map the night before Roosevelt signed the bill. These last-minute reserves are called Roosevelt's "midnight forests."

Once the forests reserves had been created, the debates began over how to use them. Americans would never have accepted the idea of forest reserves if the intent was to set land aside for its own sake, historian Alfred Runte said in the film. Instead, Pinchot promised that the land would be used for the people. The 1905 manual, The Use of the National Forest Reserves: Regulations and Instructions, written by Pinchot and his staff, states:

"Forest reserves are for the purpose of preserving a perpetual supply of timber for home industries, preventing destruction of forest cover which regulates the flow of streams, and protecting local residents from unfair competition in the use of forest and range. They are patrolled and protected, at Government expense, for the benefit of the community and the home builder."

But societal values shift, and in the last century the Forest Service has found itself in the middle of a sometimes bitter conflict over how best to use the national forests.

In 1935 a small group of men that included Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall—both of whom had cut their teeth in the Forest Service—founded the Wilderness Society. Concerned with the impacts that roads and facilities were making on the public lands, the men argued for the preservation of some of that land in its "natural" condition.

As early as 1924 the Forest Service, at Leopold's behest, had set aside the 500,000 acre Gila Wilderness as an administrative wilderness area. But in later years, the Forest Service fought against passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which defined wilderness as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Preserving land as wilderness, the agency reasoned, was a single use of the land and didn't fit within the agency's multiple-use mandate.

But there was another reason, too, why the service chafed at the popular legislation. The Forest Service was "used to thinking of itself heroically," environmental historian William Cronon said in the film. And it was also famous for its stubborn can-do attitude that one audience member at the screening characterized as "sometimes wrong but never in doubt." That attitude likely exacerbated the fight that was soon to erupt over logging in the national forests.

In the middle of the twentieth century, more and more people turned to the woods for recreation and solitude. At the same time, the Forest Service was facing immense pressure to "get the cut out," or produce as much timber as possible for the burgeoning post-World War II population and the homes that would shelter them. As hikers and picnickers came face to face with ugly clearcuts in their national forests, a conflict was inevitable.

Before World War II, the average annual timber cut in the national forests was ?? billion board feet [gotta look that number up]. In the 1980s, it skyrocketed to nearly 12 billion board feet per year, which caused a major backlash from many environmentalists and recreationists. That battle mirrored a similar one inside the service itself. Jeff DeBonis, a timber sale planner in Oregon's Willamette National Forest, became fed up with the high timber cut and founded Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, with the goal of pushing the Forest Service to manage its lands in a more ecologically and economically sustainable manner.

Clearcutting in the 1960s, especially in the Pacific Northwest (above), inspired radical environmentalists such as those in Earth First! (below) to campaign against the Forest Service.

Looking back, even some high-level Forest Service employees acknowledge in the film that they went too far during the 1980s. Orville Daniels, former Forest Supervisor for the Lolo and Bitterroot National Forests in Montana, said that during those years the agency "went to the dark side" in its attempt to get the cut out. Dale Robertson, Forest Service Chief from 1987 to 1993, said the agency during the timber-hungry 1980s really stretched the multiple-use concept by taking timber at a rate that was not sustainable.

But in the post-film panel discussion, Rick Cables, forester for the Rocky Mountain region, challenged the film's criticism of the agency as a whole, saying the timber frenzy was isolated in one area of the country.

"The Northwest, northern California, Idaho, Montana is where the whole agency got painted with one broad brush—that we all went to the dark side," he said. "And I don’t accept it, personally. Because that never happened to me."

Still, he and other panel members acknowledged that the public is more skeptical of the Forest Service now because of the perception that the service went too far with logging.

"Trust was lost, and that still plagues us," said James Bedwell, forest surpervisor for Colorado's Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland.

That distrust was illustrated by one audience member, who said President Bush's Healthy Forests Restoration Act could be called the "leave no tree behind act." Cables responded that such a characterization is "patently absurd." Still, he acknowledged the public's distrust as an obstacle the agency still has to face.

"The only way that you rebuild trust that I know is you make promises and you keep them," he said.

The Greatest Good is primarily a chronological overview, a history of great men—and a small handful of women—who created the Forest Service of today. For people who care about the public lands, it's a fascinating and enlightening journey. But most intriguing, perhaps, are the questions and the conflicts that it leaves unanswered.

In looking toward the future, filmmaker Steinke said he hopes the next documentary would tell a story about a Forest Service that survived budget cuts, avoided being absorbed into a "Department of Natural Resources," and maybe even managed to expand its land base.

"And it would be really neat to see another Pinchot, and another Leopold, and another [early forester Elers] Koch…" he said. "And I think another Earth First!, and another—maybe not Earth First!—maybe a better Sierra Club, to have that passion, I think, that makes for great story telling."

For more information about "The Greatest Good," including background material, interviews with the producers and upcoming screening dates, see the Web site at www.fs.fed.us/greatestgood.

Norton Seeks 'Common Ground' on Conservation Issues

By Wendy Worrall Redal

As Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton oversees a sweeping range of public land in the United States, most of it in the West. Her jurisdiction includes all of America's national parks and monuments, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Much of the country's most spectacular wilderness lies within Interior's purview. One-third of the nation's coal, oil and natural gas supplies also come from Interior-managed lands, while 60 percent of U.S. produce production is grown with reclamation-project water.

How to balance the country's resource needs versus conservation is the key challenge for the future, Norton told a packed crowd at the University of Colorado at Boulder on November 23, 2004. Her visit capped the "Inside Interior" series, which featured previous interviews with former Interior secretaries on their role in shaping the West's public lands. The series was co-sponsored by CU's Center of the American West, The Nature Conservancy, and the Denver law firm of Brownstein, Hyatt and Farber, where Norton was employed as senior counsel before becoming Secretary.

The challenges for the Interior department are growing as "more and more people move closer in to our Western lands," Norton said. "We have more and more requirements that people want to see met from our Western lands." Those challenges must be met, she said, "in a way that addresses people's needs and protects those great areas.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton spoke at CU on Nov. 23 (Photo/DOI).

"It's not always popular to say we have to face reality…We have to provide energy from some place. We have to provide recreation that some people love and some people don't like. We have a great puzzle trying to figure out how you can find the best spots for all of those activities to take place."

As conflict grows, so does the need to collaborate and seek consensus, according to Norton.

"We have to get people to sit down and find common ground…to find solutions. That's what I've tried to bring to the Department of the Interior." She calls her motto, aimed at that goal, the "Four Cs": "communication, consultation and cooperation, all in the service of conservation."

But the meaning of conservation is itself open to debate, observed CU history professor Patricia Limerick as she introduced Norton.

"The definition of conservation in Theodore Roosevelt's time and the definition of conservation in our time is one of the big questions we've been pursuing in this series, especially in reappraising the role of utilitarian values and preservationist values in the practice of conservation," Limerick said.

She asked Norton to respond to critics' views that the Four Cs are "a smokescreen, a way of taking our eyes off the fact that industry will probably come out ahead." Norton insisted that conservation efforts can and must take into account the complex interests of varied parties, in a manner that both protects the environment and supports society's economic needs.

"I think you can find that if you have an atmosphere that encourages people to be creative in their approaches to solving problems. If you get people to understand each other's perspectives. If you have ways of trying to meet a lot of different goals at the same time. I think you can find that best if you can get people to actually sit down and talk with each other."

Norton said she is convinced that involving local voices is essential to successful outcomes. "It gives us the ability to fine-tune things…to find ways to reconcile some of the problems," she said.

She pointed to success with farmers and ranchers in protecting prairie dogs.

"Endangered species for most farmers and ranchers is a very negative concept," Norton said. At a town hall meeting she attended in South Dakota, ranchers told her that the year prairie dogs were first considered for listing as an endangered species, the sale of prairie dog poison doubled. "Clearly that is not the result we want from endangered species protection," Norton said.

Instead, Interior programs have provided funding and technical assistance for landowners to restore or enhance habitat on their property. "It really taps into people's usual enthusiasm about wildlife, and it gets people involved in protection of endangered species in a very positive way," Norton said. "That's the kind of thing that we're trying to do."

Norton also highlighted progress on air pollution through using technical innovations to create a positive environmental outcome.

"When we originally came in with the Clean Air laws, we started mandating you have to have this kind of pollution-control technology on your smokestack. Well, if we had stuck with that approach, people would comfortably be installing 1975 pollution control equipment, and saying, 'OK, that's over. We solved that.'

"What we instead learned is that you need to have programs that encourage people to develop new technologies, to advance in a way that we find environmental solutions. So we go through things like emissions training and performance and results-based approaches; we have used American ingenuity to solve environmental problems. I think you can do that with land-based issues as well."

"There's a lot you can do to harness technology to solve problems," Norton said. People tend to think of 1920s-era oil wells when we speak of energy development, she explained, "yet when you compare that with what is being used in some of the most advanced sites today, they are using directional drilling from a place on the surface to reach miles underground so there's no effect for miles on the surface."

Norton contends such new approaches will greatly mitigate the environmental impact of drilling for oil and gas in environmentally sensitive places like Colorado's Roan Plateau and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, projects she is solidly behind.

While President Bush's national energy plan also calls for conservation via greater automobile fuel efficiency, Norton sees drilling in ANWR as integral to the country's energy future.

"ANWR is our largest potential source of onshore oil in the country," Norton said, and "oil is part of our future at least for the near term."

While 1.5 million acres of ANWR will be focused on for energy production, according to Norton, she said only 2,000 acres will be discernibly impacted. Limiting the number of roads to serve multiple wells, grouping well heads together, and using directional drilling are among the approaches planned to reduce the environmental footprint, according to Norton.

"I believe that it can go forward in an environmentally responsible way," Norton said, eliciting vocal guffaws from a number of audience members who continued to pose tough questions on the issue to the secretary during a question-and-answer period following her interview.

The secretary was also challenged on her assertion that emissions trading is an effective market-based way to reduce air pollution and potential climate change effects.

"You can't trade emissions of mercury," remarked audience member Jack Twombly, CU professor emeritus of electrical engineering and a harsh critic of Norton and the Bush Administration's record on environmental issues.

Ultimately, however, Norton said she is committed to market approaches to solving environmental problems. "I tend to come from a fairly libertarian perspective," she said, which provides the philosophical base for the way she addresses issues as secretary. "That's a part of why I try to find approaches that are not government-coercion-based. I favor approaches that favor human freedom, human creativity."

"Market forces," Norton said, "establish…a way for people to be creative as they're making decisions about environmental protections. So it's not just top-down regulation after regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency. It is people who are given a standard they need to meet and can come up with all kinds of different ways to meet that standard.

"Similarly, it's not a question of how much. Do we want to have more or less endangered species protection? That's not the issue. The question is whether you want to have people enthusiastic about protecting endangered species or if you want to have a system that is based on a very punitive approach.

"Yes, there are people who violate environmental laws. There are people who shoot endangered species or poach endangered species. For them the punitive, criminal justice approach is the right approach. But for people of good will trying to solve problems, trying to find ways of having an alternative to a regulatory mandate coming from Washington, I think, is a very good way of protecting the environment."

Whether or not such collaborative approaches are indeed effective, or effective enough, is a matter clearly open to debate, evidenced by the at-times heated exchanges between Norton and her audience members.

Clearly, however, Norton was on target when she noted "the Department of the Interior is a microcosm for a lot of the changes that take place in our culture…a lot of the pressures that exist in the West and affect all of our lifestyles in the West.

"Different people have different ideas about what would be ideal for our millions and millions of acres that we manage. The great thing is that people care so passionately about our lands. The worst thing is for people to quit caring. We appreciate the debate because it shows how much people care about our lands."

A full transcript of Norton's interview is available on the Headwaters News web site. Transcripts of the other Interior secretaries' conversations at the University of Colorado are also available on the site.

Colorado Ranchers Hopeful in the Face of Drought

By Omar Cabrera

"My water comes from the sky," said Bill Gray, who is grateful that the level of precipitation at his ranch was normal this past year.

Gray is a rancher in Crowley County in southeastern Colorado. He irrigates a third of his land to produce alfalfa and grass to feed his cattle. What happens with the rest, Gray said, depends completely on rainfall.

In recent months the grass has begun to recover on Gray's property after a drought that brought precipitation in the state to its lowest levels in a century.

Encouraged by this wet period, Gray said he bought 50 new cows in 2004 and is considering buying more.

(Photo/BLM Montana)

Like Gray, most ranchers and farmers are now beginning to restock and to increase their production, according to Terry Fankhauser, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen's Association.

"We're now desperately trying to rebuild those herds," added Jim Miller, director of policy and communications for the Colorado Department of Agriculture.

Department statistics show that livestock represents about 70 percent of the total agricultural production in Colorado, annual sales for which are about $5 billion.

Though figures for 2004 are not yet available, Miller estimated that agricultural production has increased between 10 and 15 percent, based on direct observation.

"We have a very good harvest this year," Miller said. "It wasn't that we had a lot of rains, but they were timely."

But the effects of the drought continue. In January 2004, the state's total count of cattle and calves was 2.4 million, the lowest inventory since 1962, according to Colorado Department of Agriculture figures.

Fankhauser said the state has lost so many cattle that it will take "a number of years to recover."

With the grass weakened and precipitation returning to normal levels, some undesirable plants are growing faster, Gray said. Two of the most pervasive weeds are kochia and Russian thistle.

Timothy Seastedt, a biology professor at the University of Colorado and expert on invasive weeds, explained that nutrient levels in the soil are more abundant and readily available for plants' immediate use after a drought than during a normal year. During dry years they remain in the soil instead of going up to plants, Seastedt said.

Seastedt said weeds are "rapid growers" that compete with grass and other plants for these nutrients.

Microbes in the soil keep working even after a lack of water has killed plants, processing nutrients that are available when rain comes back. Since weeds compete better than grass, they grow faster, the scientist explained.

Recovery has been difficult, given that this has been a record-beating drought. A study by Hydrosphere Resource Consultants concluded "the current drought…has been the most severe on record by several measures. Stream flows in Colorado in 2002 have generally been the lowest in over 100 years and the tree ring data suggest that flows are probably the lowest in 300 to 500 years."

The study, titled, "What the current drought means for the future of water management in Colorado," stated that the economic sector affected most by this natural phenomenon is agriculture.

The document estimated that in 2002 alone, agricultural losses due to drought were between $500 and $600 million.

According to Miller, the lack of water affects crops in two major ways. First, the roots of plants do not develop enough to take necessary nutrients from the soil.

No matter that producers use plenty of fertilizer, if plants don't have enough water, the fertilizer will not reach them, Miller said. In the case of corn, for example, the result is usually plants that are high in nitrites, which are toxic to cattle.

Another impact of drought on crops is that they germinate poorly or don't germinate at all, according to Miller. The result is a decrease in production.

The head of a normal wheat plant is about as long as an index finger, but in a drought year it may grow only to between an inch and an inch and a half, Miller explained.

Similarly with corn, a cob may not fill completely with kernels. It may have seeds in its lower portion but not in its narrower end, said Miller.

The lack of water doesn't reduce only the amount of production, but also the weight of crops. Miller said that in a dry year, a bushel of corn might weigh 50 pounds, whereas in a normal year it would weigh 62 pounds.

In terms of value of production, hay is the most important crop in Colorado, followed by corn and wheat. The state also produces potatoes, vegetables and fruits.

These crops represent about a third of the total agricultural production of the state. The other two-thirds encompass livestock, mainly cattle.

Miller explained that "most of our field crop production exists because those cattle are there."

Livestock have also suffered as a result of the current drought, due to scarcity of grass and food in general.

Gray said the drought pushed cattlemen to choose one of three options: either buying hay and corn to feed their cows at higher costs, taking their cows to other states, or selling part or all of their herd.

He chose the third option. Gray said that more than a year after the beginning of the drought, in the fall of 2001, he sold a few of his 650 mother cows. As the drought continued and got worse, he sold more cattle until he was down to 325 cows.

Miller recalled that in 2002 there were stock sale yards where people were trading cattle 24 hours a day. Due to the high number of animals on offer, however, prices were not the best.

The result is that from 2002 to the present, the number of cattle in Colorado has decreased about 80 percent, according to Fankhauser.

Most of the cows sold in Colorado went to Iowa, Eastern Kansas and Missouri, Miller said.

This movement of cattle creates another problem: acclimation. "We're all raised to find certain foods tasty and other foods don't taste so good to us. It's just like that with cattle," he explained.

In other words, if cows don't like the grass they find in pastures, they eat enough to keep alive but not to grow as well as they could.

Miller added that cows develop features, like hair size and density, which allow them to do better where they are. Some of these genetic strains were developed by ranchers' grandfathers, and therefore represent the work of several generations.

"If you sold off half of your herd, and now you're trying to buy replacement cattle to rebuild your herd, you're buying a genetic strain that isn't acclimated to your particular geographic area," Miller said.

In addition, now that most ranchers are buying cattle, the prices are higher than two years ago when everybody wanted to sell. Gray said he got an average price of $625 per head when he sold part of his herd, while recently he has paid between $1,200 and $1,300 per head for new cows.

As crops have begun to grow green again this year, so has the hope of ranchers like Gray.

But the lack of water may not be over. Miller said that according to some scientists, the region could be at the beginning of a major 20- to 30-year drought. This forecast is based on the analysis of tree rings and other clues that indicate that Colorado has experienced these long- lasting droughts every 400 years.

The data indicate that one of these dry periods occurred around the year 1700, and before that, around 1300.

Four years of drought have been enough to dramatically impact the lives of Colorado ranchers and farmers. Gray said that with fewer cows in his herd, he has changed some of his habits due to the drought. For example, he used to go fishing in the mountains every spring in but no longer does, because his income has been reduced by about half.

What if the drought lasts for two more decades? He prefers to think that won't be the case, and faces the situation with a sense of humor. "I hope this is a 300-year-drought or even a 100-year-drought. I won't have to be around to see the next one," the rancher said.

Interior Secretaries Reflect on Legacies During CU Series

By Wendy Worrall Redal

James Watt.

The name alone is enough to evoke a visceral response among seasoned environmentalists. They remember Watt as the abrasive Reagan-era Interior Secretary in the early 1980s, bent on opening vast tracts of Western public lands for extractive use and returning their control to the states.

James Watt, Interior Secretary from 1980 to 1983 under President Reagan. (Photo courtesy of Center of the American West)

Yet one Watt successor, a Democrat deeply at odds with Watt’s arch-conservative agenda, says he is “positively nostalgic” for the Watt years when compared to the environmental record of the current Bush Administration.

Bruce Babbitt, the centrist Arizona governor who headed Interior under President Clinton from 1993-2001, told a University of Colorado audience on April 20th that Watt “awakened the American people to the need to talk back.”

Despite Watt’s tough rhetoric, though, “not a lot changed,” said Babbitt. “This administration is exactly the opposite. It’s not being done in a frontal fashion but in an incremental way, chipping, chipping, chipping…through technicalities, jargon, minutiae.”

Bruce Babbitt, President Clinton's Interior Secretary from 1993 to 2001. (Photo/Center of the American West)

Babbitt cited marginal changes in the Clean Water Act, for example, that are gradually eroding it while at the same time the administration issues press releases touting “improved administration of the Clean Water Act.” Along with Bush’s “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forests” initiatives, the environment is being damaged through “incredibly subtle means” that are presented in terms that mask the real intent of regulatory changes, according to Babbitt.

Both Babbitt and Watt visited the Boulder campus as part of the “Inside Interior” series hosted by CU’s Center of the American West and The Nature Conservancy. The series features interviews with former Secretaries of the Interior, whose philosophies and policies have been integral in shaping the face of public lands in the West.

Watt met with the Ted Scripps Fellows, Center for Environmental Journalism staff and graduate students on Jan. 10. He took issue with the way his administration has been characterized, contending that a hostile Washington press corps had not told the truth about his accomplishments.

“If I believed what the press said about Jim Watt, I’d hate him,” he said. Yet he claimed that “in every environmental arena the lands are being better managed” since he was in office. “We’re seeing the restoration of air, land and water values” that are in harmony with human needs.

Watt said he and President Reagan were “conservationists” in the “classic school of [former Forest Service head] Gifford Pinchot.” He defined conservation as “the proper use of the resources for the benefit of the people” both now and in the future. Watt contrasted that approach with the “new philosophy of preservation,” one he thinks tilts the balance too far away from people and their needs. When he took office after a decade of major environmental legislation moves, Watt said that balance was far askew.

“The essence of Western Civilization is that man has dignity above all,” according to Watt. It is that basic tenet, he said, which underlies his approach to environmental issues.

“I would be willing to flood a canyon in the Rocky Mountains so that you would have water in Boulder to drink, even if it killed some animals and destroyed some land,” he said.

He agreed that conservation efforts might ward off the necessity of such tradeoffs, but said they need to be “prompted through market-driven initiatives,” not coercive measures.

“The way to get people to conserve water is to get rid of the subsidies. Kentucky bluegrass in the desert is there because water is cheap,” Watt said.

Secretary Babbitt, on the other hand, argued for the importance of legal and administrative means to ensure environmental protection.

“You have to have a legislative stick to get anywhere,” Babbitt said. “Once you have the power, the legal authority, it’s then imperative…to work to reconcile competing interests in the best way that’s compatible with the legal objective we’re here to enforce.”

Bringing disparate voices together to talk about how to achieve objectives is essential for political success, according to Babbitt. He took such an approach to the Northwest Forest Plan, Clinton’s mandate to create a scientifically driven ecosystem plan to protect 200 species on public lands. To do that, Babbitt said, he insisted that jurisdictional boundaries and agency badges were “left at the door” when it came time to engage in joint planning.

On occasion, however, Babbitt encouraged the protection of special tracts of land through administrative fiat. A vivid example was the creation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, achieved through Clinton’s use of the 1906 Antiquities Act. A provision in the act grants the President the right to declare as national monuments “objects of historic or scientific interest” on federal lands.

Grand Staircase was really “a product of Dick Morris,” Babbitt revealed, the dramatic environmental initiative that the Clinton pollster said would make a big political impact. While Babbitt said “congressional legislation is vastly preferential to a presidential decree,” he acknowledged the practical value of the “creative forcing” possible through his close relationship with the president.

By Clinton’s second term, Babbitt saw that the way forward on environmental issues was to appeal to the president’s desire for a legacy. At one point he showed Clinton a tally between himself and Theodore Roosevelt comparing their records on acreage set aside for preservation.

“I put their names side by side on a card,” Babbitt recalled, suggesting to Clinton that he could outdo his storied predecessor when it came to protecting land for parks and monuments.

“That was the moment,” Babbitt said. “It was not environment, it was legacy…From that point on I had a mandate.”

It was a mandate in sync with Babbitt’s own sense of a legacy for the American people, one dedicated to “preserving ecosystems [and] protecting creation in all its glory.”

“Multiple use is not the right image for public lands,” he told a receptive audience. Currently, Babbitt said, “the primary purpose of public lands is to drill for oil and gas everywhere. It’s an outrage.

“We can’t drill our way out of this cul-de-sac,” he said, arguing that it was not worth ruining the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the Colorado Plateau “for a few more weeks” of energy use. Longer-term approaches to energy are essential for a sustainable future, according to Babbitt.

“Climate change is the most ominous environmental threat we face in this century…We have to take dramatic steps to get off of fossil fuels,” he said. He contended that the U.S. must look to nuclear power to “bridge across to a future of renewable energy.”

The only alternative would be to cut our energy use by 75 percent, Babbitt said, “and that isn’t going to happen.” In terms of hard choices, “coal emissions vastly outweigh nuclear risks” in terms of environmental hazards, in his view.

But Babbitt worries the American people aren’t concerned enough about the problem of global warming to make the tough decisions required. He commended the public on mobilizing well in crises, but “short of a galvanizing crisis we’re a society of happy complacency,” a condition that isn’t well suited for responding to “slowly emerging problems like global warming.”

If we continue to do nothing, however, Babbitt suggested a vision of the near future: “There will be no glaciers left in Glacier Park in my lifetime. The Arctic will be a bluewater ocean.” When the snow pack in the Rockies disappears and there is no more “timed sequential release” into reservoirs, “it will be chaos in the watershed of the Colorado River,” and “the Colorado ski industry will have to move to Montana.

“And we can’t even muster our elected leaders to do anything about automobile efficiency,” Babbitt said with a note of despair. “Overnight we could double our fuel economy to 40 miles per gallon and cut our fossil fuel use in half…but our political system is unresponsive.”

Yet he is not without optimism. He spoke of the success of the wolf reinroduction program in Yellowstone, launched in 1995 while he was Secretary. It showed that restoring ecosystems was possible, he said.

In a region where the elk population was “out of control, the wolves just electrified the place,” said Babbitt, who also noted that riparian systems have come back, and beaver and aspen are flourishing.

The wolf, to Babbitt, is “the elegant bearer of a message I want to be heard in the West — of dominant public servitude of public lands.”

For Babbitt, protecting threatened ecosystems is paramount. “The wolf is saying, ‘I have the first right to be here.’ Ranchers will have to learn to make sacrifices.”

Two secretaries, two eras: much historical perspective.

The current Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, is expected to conclude the interview series sometime this fall. The date and time are yet to be announced but will be noted on the Center of the American West’s web site, www.centerwest.org, when they are set.

For transcripts of the previous secretaries’ CU-Boulder talks, go to www.headwatersnews.org/interior.html

CEJ Colleagues Discover Louisiana’s Environmental Riches and Challenges at Annual SEJ Conference

By Wendy Redal

The silver pontoon boat chugged slowly through the swamp, slicing through the opaque water that wends its way among marsh grasses and knobby cypress knees. Its passengers, poised at the rail, looked intently into the thick vegetation, searching for the telltale wake that would reveal an alligator slithering from its nest.

Though elusive, gators abound in Louisiana’s swamps, as do marsh deer, snowy egrets and myriad other birds often seen from the deck of Captain Frenchie’s boat as it explores the recesses of Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, a 22,770-acre preserve contained wholly within the city limits of New Orleans. Frenchie is a wiry Cajun with a thick French accent whose roots in the swamp extend back nearly as far as some of the aged, moss-draped trees. He works in partnership with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service that administers the refuge to share the bayou’s abundant treasures, often inaccessible on foot, with visitors.

"Captain Frenchie," Cajun boat pilot and storyteller extraordinaire, shares an intimate moment with his baby alligator.

Four Center for Environmental Journalism colleagues were aboard a recent cruise with Frenchie as part of their visit to New Orleans for the 13th annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference held Sept. 10-14. Ted Scripps Fellows Kim McGuire and Vicki Monks, graduate assistant Emily Cooper and CEJ program coordinator Wendy Redal toured Bayou Sauvage on one of several SEJ field trips designed to educate conference participants about Louisiana’s diverse environmental challenges.

CEJ Program Coordinator Wendy Redal pets a baby alligator, held by Scripps Fellow Vicki Monks.

In this case, the issues involve how to protect these lush natural wetlands in the face of encroaching development. Once slated for infill in the 1980s to make way for a new suburban shopping complex, Bayou Sauvage was set aside as a wildlife refuge in 1990. It has remained remarkably wild, despite two freeways transecting it and a garbage dump on its flank. For many New Orleans school kids who never get outside the concrete bounds of their inner-city neighborhoods, a field trip to Bayou Sauvage is as exotic as an expedition to the equatorial jungle and a chance to see up-close the beauty and value of nature, perhaps for the first time.

Other excursions brought CEJ staff and fellows face to face with an array of pressing environmental issues. On the “Coast 2050” tour, Co-director Tom Yulsman, Monks and Redal followed a thin, sinking highway down Bayou Lafourche to the Gulf of Mexico, at which point the road was but inches above the water’s incursion into the marsh. There, they learned about the massive consequences of Louisiana’s eroding coastal wetlands, from disappearing fisheries and threatened oil and gas pipelines to the prospect of New Orleans’ demolition in a major hurricane, without the protective barrier accorded by a more intact coastline. Journalists aboard the field trip also got details of the $14 billion federal restoration project the state is seeking to turn the destruction around.

McGuire, whose beat at her home paper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, includes extensive coverage of environmental toxins, attended the “Chemical Corridor” excursion, subtitled “‘Cancer Alley’ or Environmental Hype?” The journalists on board toured a chemical plant and met with industry officials, government regulators and public-interest watchdog advocates in an effort to better understand how health risks are being addressed in one of the nation’s most active chemical manufacturing regions.

McGuire said the most powerful part of the tour for her was the discussion about environmental justice. Participants went into some of New Orleans' most impoverished neighborhoods and met residents who were seeing their communities dissolve as people moved away to escape pollution from petrochemical companies.

"It was an incredibly moving experience to listen to some of the elderly residents talk about how difficult it was to decide to leave their family homes," McGuire said.

Other field trips covered Louisiana’s troubled oyster industry, trade-offs between economic benefits and environmental liabilities of oil and gas exploration in the state, and a canoe journey to see the impact of toxic sludge on Bayou Trepagnier, a Mississippi River tributary named a National Scenic River in 1973 but which had been a dumping ground for untreated refinery waste for decades.

Conferees also attended a broad slate of indoor sessions at the Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel in downtown New Orleans, including a panel discussion on President Bush’s nominee for EPA administrator, Utah Governor Mike Leavitt.

Each year, the five Ted Scripps Fellows in residence at the University of Colorado attend the SEJ conference with CEJ staff. Fellow Eric Frankowski was honored this year at the conference’s annual Reporting on the Environment Awards event with a nod for best small-market reporting in print.

Many former fellows were also in attendance, including Daniel Glick, a 2000-2001 fellow, who was on hand to sign copies of his new book Monkey Dancing as part of an SEJ-sponsored author-signing event.

Wendy Redal is program coordinator for the Center for Environmental Journalism.

Stewart Udall Inaugurates Interior Secretaries Speaker Series at CU

By Amanda Leigh Haag

“Rock Star.” “Dashing.”

Not the usual way one would describe a self-confessed farm boy with the southwestern high desert in his blood. But that’s exactly how colleagues characterized the charismatic former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Lee Udall when he spoke Sept. 24 at the University of Colorado’s Glenn Miller Ballroom. Udall opened the 2003-2004 series on the role of Secretaries of the Interior in shaping the American West. The event was hosted by The Center of the American West in partnership with The Nature Conservancy.

Udall spoke to a packed auditorium about his 1961-1969 terms as secretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and his role as champion of the American environmental movement. He humbly credited his vision and success to “leadership coming up from the grass roots” and “a country that was ready for it.”

Laced throughout Udall’s acknowledgement of his landmark environmental legislation was an impassioned gratitude for the “wonderful bipartisan politics” of the 1960s. Udall is known for initiating the Clean Air Act and the Wilderness Act, among other pieces of landmark environmental legislation, and for valiantly withdrawing mining and homesteading claims to protect Native American rights.

Dressed sharply with a classic bolo tie, 83-year-old Udall’s appearance and his down-to-earth demeanor reflected his Western heritage. Charles Wilkinson, co-founder of The Center of the American West, aptly quoted Udall as he introduced him by saying, “When you grow up in a small farming town and you raise your own food, you’re close to the ground and close to the animals.”

Udall later reflected on being a “Depression kid,” brought up on the principle that “the country’s better off when the community is more important than the individual.” These all-American values shaped his politics and his dedication to the environmental movement, according to Udall.

Interior Secretary Udall with President Kennedy. (Photo courtesy of the Stewart Lee Udall Collection, University of Arizona.)

Throughout the evening, Udall credited his legislative success to the political climate of the 1960s, during which he had an open slate to work with. Kennedy, preoccupied with the Cold War, handed full rein to Udall to manage natural resources.

Udall discredited the assumption that legislation must come from the “top down” in order to command action in government, at least during his terms. “Did the initiative come from the government? It came from the streets. They just burst in my door, and that was a wonderful time,” he said.

Udall’s repeated praise of the utopian bipartisan politics of the 1960s contrasted sharply with his opinion of the rise of partisan opposition that followed. In a question-and-answer session afterward, Udall reflected on the current state of polarized politics and its obstruction to environmental legislation. He asked solemnly, “Do you hear the words ‘Leave behind a legacy’ much today?”

Quoting the “Ask not” inaugural address of President Kennedy, Udall pointed out that the theme of Congress today is “What tax breaks can we get?” not “Is it good for the country, the people?”

But with character living up to his celebrated introduction, Udall ended on an optimistic note, imploring the younger generation to “just demand action” and to “ask what you can do for your community.”

Amanda Haag is a master’s student in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado and a student associate of the university’s Carbon, Climate and Society Initiative.

Weevils Wage War on Invasive Weed

By Amanda Leigh Haag

Within a mile of the sprawling suburb of Superior, Colo., a war is being waged. In sight of shopping malls and town homes, an army of hungry insects is bearing down on its adversary: a noxious weed, known as ‘diffuse knapweed.’

University of Colorado biologist Tim Seastedt led a class of CU journalism students through the battlefield in September. Standing amidst native wild rose, prairie grass and skeletal remains of knapweed, he explained how he monitors the progress and counts the casualties. His insects, called ‘biocontrols,’ have reduced the invasive knapweed on the Superior study site from 30% cover in 1997 to perhaps a tenth of 1 percent cover today, according to Seastedt. Popping open the remains of a knapweed shoot, Seastedt revealed its inhabitant: a thriving weevil. “He was gonna sit inside that stem all winter. But now I’ve rained on his parade,” said Seastedt.

In 1997, Seastedt released a small platoon of plant-munching insects: a few hundred in number, they consisted of a species of stem-boring weevil, two species of gall flies, one species of root-feeding beetle and one species of root-boring weevil. Today, his troops number in the billions and have dispersed across roughly 10,000 acres of land in Boulder County. “Wherever there is knapweed in Boulder County, there now are bugs,” said Seastedt.

According to Seastedt, diffuse knapweed arrived on the scene “with a vengeance” in the 1980s. This member of the sunflower family was introduced from Europe and Asia and has made itself at home in Boulder County open spaces. In the absence of natural predators, the opportunistic weed has infested 83,000 acres along the Front Range, according to Boulder County figures. Seastedt estimates that knapweed can overtake up to 50 percent of grazing lands and prairies by displacing native plants. Cattle dislike knapweed, making it a grievance to ranchers. Disturbed soils from cattle ranges, development sites, and off-trail hiking are especially vulnerable to invasion.

When Seastedt got involved, Boulder County was footing a $50,000-$100,000 bill each year to control knapweed via broadcast spraying of herbicides. A nearby resident with multiple chemical sensitivities attempted to enlist Seastedt, exclaiming, “They’re gonna spray the prairie!” Seastedt declined to get involved until he learned that the county was not monitoring the effects of the herbicides.

Seastedt observed that while the chemicals would knock the knapweed back for a year, the rogue weeds would show right back up again within a couple of years. Seastedt noted, “The prairie is a kind of sink—the reason the weed is out there is because of the seed source.” Essentially tumbleweeds as adults, knapweed can “tumble and bounce a quarter mile across the landscape, most of the seeds hopping out along the way.”

Seastedt had a hunch that the biocontrols might help cut back knapweed. So he talked Boulder County into an experiment: to release his insect brigade on 157 acres of ‘prairie turned knapweed’ near Superior.

Six years later, Seastedt speaks fondly of his insects. On this experimental slice of restored prairie, knapweed has retreated, its seed survivorship reduced to a fraction of 1 percent. Referring to the seed casualties, Seastedt said, “My poor little weevils got up in the spring with nothing to eat. Where’s lunch?” Since knapweed reproduces purely by seed, seed casualties are fantastic news. According to Seastedt, the diminished seed survivorship has also been observed on the 10,000 acres of Boulder County that have been stormed by the insects.

That the insects singled out knapweed has been fortuitous for Seastedt and Boulder County. So far, the insects have only had eyes for knapweed and not natives such as prairie grass. This may hold enormous promise for Seastedt’s biocontrol brigade to treat knapweed across the state. Kathy Damas, Integrated Pest Management Coordinator for the City of Boulder, stated that she thought Seastedt’s experiment had been a great success and that the city had chosen not to broadcast-spray diffuse knapweed this year.

Amanda Haag is a CU master’s student studying environmental journalism and a participant in the university’s Carbon, Climate and Society Initiative.