Smarter Tree-Huggers
New approaches to environmental policy will depend on the creativity and ingenuity of private individuals, organizations, and associations.

By Allison Freeman, an environmental policy analyst (and a sequoia hugger) at the Competitive Enterprise Institute
June 4, 2001 12:10 p.m.

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.