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sequoia tree can make an environmentalist out of anyone. Stare up
its tremendous trunk, and you just can't help hugging the handsome
redwood.
President Bush gave the General Sherman Sequoia, a 2,100-year-old
tree in California's Sequoia National Park, a verbal embrace on
Wednesday in his first major speech on the environment. In addition
to expressing his affection for the towering tree, the president
announced his National Parks Legacy Project and proffered the philosophy
of his "new environmentalism."
Some may think the president an unlikely tree hugger, operating
under the majestic influence of the giant tree. They refuse to believe
that "environmentalism" plays a part in "new environmentalism."
But the guiding principles of the president's plan are much more
likely to help the environment and its custodians than those of
the past administration ever did.
In the previous administration, expansion of the governmental estate
was a primary "conservation" tool. Usurping control of land across
the West won President Clinton easy applause from environmentalists,
while expanding the fiefdom of the federal bureaucracy. In the 1990s,
the National Parks added at least 3.4 million acres, and federal
lands increased by more than 6 million acres.
But this old environmentalism was akin to a government hoarding
food stores and allowing them to go bad. That wouldn't feed the
hungry, and land acquisition hasn't helped the environment. While
the amount of land in the federal estate has increased, its health
has not. The U.S. Forest Service rated over 60 percent of national
forests and other federal-resource lands as "very unhealthy" or
in "deteriorating health." Sewage at Yellowstone National Park leaks
into native trout streams, and rain leaks onto Civil War relics
at Gettysburg National Historical Park. Those awe-inspiring sequoias
are endangered by poorly placed concrete.
Yes, the gorgeous, exhilarating National Parks are in quite a mess.
The president's National Parks Legacy Project's will spend $5 billion
in maintenance. It seems to move away from a policy of "acquire
and control" and toward one of increased stewardship.
But it is not clear that new funding will improve federal lands.
More money has been streaming their way for years. Holly Lippke
Fretwell of PERC found that "annual costs for land management have
far outpaced the rate at which the federal estate is expanding."
In her report, "Federal Estate: Is Bigger Better?," Ms. Fretwell
found that while federal land holdings increased 6 percent in the
last four decades, their operating budgets increased by 262 percent
above inflation. Since 1980, National Park Service operating expenses
increased by an average of 2.6 percent per year above inflation.
These rich inputs are leaving poor outputs on federal lands. This
is due in large part to egregious bureaucracy. Politicians in Washington,
D.C., dictate spending in National Parks, and they don't make the
most logical decisions. For example, when Glacier National Park's
managers requested funding to repair the Going-to-the-Sun Highway,
a scenic road that almost all park visitors traverse, they instead
received $6 million to build six state-of-the-art outhouses that
will be used by less than one percent of all visitors. That's foul-smelling
policy.
While federal land management leaves net losses of billions of dollars
a year, state and private land managers upkeep their natural resources
for a net benefit. Many acres of state land are school trust lands,
where the states are forced by law to manage the land to provide
funding in perpetuity for their schoolchildren. This creates the
incentive for the state to manage the land to provide for benefits
today and tomorrow.
Despite the $5-billion appropriation for the National Parks, President
Bush seems to understand the value of state and local control. He
called for "a new spirit of respect and cooperation" and a "new
environmentalism" in which "citizens and private groups play a crucial
role." New approaches to environmental policy that complement or
even replace the current regulatory solutions will depend on the
creativity and ingenuity of private individuals, organizations,
and associations.
Those within arm's reach of a sequoia know its needs better than
a bureaucrat chained to a desk 3,000 miles away. If President Bush
really wants to be a compassionate conservationist, he'll make sure
his "new environmentalism" radically alters the current land-management
bureaucracy, so that those in reach of the trees have the opportunity
to take care of them.
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