July 18, 2013
Mr. Speaker:
I
rise today to warn of the latest episode in a saga that can best be
described as “Greens Gone Wild.” It involves the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service proposal to declare two million acres in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains as “critical habitat” for the Sierra Nevada Yellow Legged Frog
and the Yosemite Toad under the Endangered Species Act.
That
is essentially the footprint of the Sierra Nevada mountains from Lassen
County north of Tahoe to Kern County just outside of Los Angeles. This
designation would add Draconian new restrictions to those that have
already severely reduced productive uses such as grazing, timber
harvesting, mining, recreation and tourism and fire suppression efforts.
And
for what? Even the Fish and Wildlife Service admits that the two
biggest factors in the decline of these amphibian populations are not
human activity at all, but rather non-native trout predators and the Bd
fungus that has stricken amphibian populations across the western United
States – neither of which will be relieved by this drastic expansion of
federal regulations.
The
species that will be most affected by this action is the human
population, and that result will be tragic, severe, and entirely
preventable.
For
example, timber harvesting that once removed the overgrowth from our
forests and put it to productive use – assuring us both healthier
forests and a thriving economy -- is down more than 80 percent since
1980 in the Sierras – all because of government restrictions. The
result is more frequent and intense forest fires, closed mills,
unemployed families and a devastated economy throughout the region.
Existing
regulations already effectively put hundreds of thousands of acres of
forest off limits to human activity by such laws as the Wilderness Act,
the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Clean Water Act, the National
Environmental Policy Act, not to mention a crushing array of California
state regulations.
This proposal by the fish and wildlife service would vastly expand these restrictions.
This is part of a much bigger picture.
In
Yosemite National Park, the Department of Interior is proposing to
expel long-standing tourist amenities from the Valley and lock in a plan
that would result in 27 percent fewer campsites than in 1997 and 31
percent less lodging.
Throughout
the Sierra Nevada, the U.S. Forest Service is closing access roads,
imposing cost-prohibitive fees and conditions on cabin rentals, grazing
rights, mining, and of course, timber harvesting, and obstructing
long-standing community events on which many of these towns rely for
tourism.
The
one common denominator in these actions is an obvious desire to force
the public off the public’s land. Gifford Pinchot, the legendary
founder of the U.S. Forest Service always said the purpose of the public
lands was the “greatest good for the greatest number in the long run.”
John Muir, the legendary conservationist responsible for preserving
Yosemite Valley did so in the words of the legislation he inspired, for
the express purpose of “public use, resort and recreation.”
These
visions of the sound management of our public lands by the pioneers of
our parks and forest systems are quickly being replaced by elitist and
exclusionary policies that can best be described as “look, but don’t
touch; visit, but don’t enjoy.”
No
one values the natural resources of the Sierra Nevada more than the
people who live there and who have entrusted me to speak for them in
Congress. These communities have jealously safeguarded the beauty of
the region and the sustainability of the lands for generations. Their
prosperity – and their posterity -- depends on sustained and responsible
stewardship of these lands.
Now,
Federal authorities are replacing these balanced and responsible
policies with vastly different ones that amount to a policy of exclusion
and benign neglect.