JoseCuervo
New member
Hmmmm.... Ol'Dubya must not want to have any Wilderness topics come up during an election year, as his record must not be one that should be brought to the Voter's attention, close to election day.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Wilderness Act celebration delayed until after election
GRANTS PASS, Ore. – A federally sponsored conference to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Wilderness Act has collapsed after the U.S. Forest Service told conservationists it had to be postponed until after the 2004 election.
Informed that the National Wilderness Summit and Expo scheduled for Oct. 1-7 in Denver could not be held before the Nov. 2 election, conservation groups jointly planning the event dropped out, feeling they were no longer full partners in the event.
“What is frustrating to me is we have leadership at the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture talking about partnerships on public lands,” said Don Hunger, director of national program development for the Student Conservation Association, who served as co-chairman of the conference planning committee. “It pretty much turns that relationship on its head, and says we’re not a partnership.”
Sally Collins, associate director of the Forest Service, the agency’s No. 2 position, said she alone made the decision to postpone the conference out of a general desire to keep it from being overshadowed by the Nov. 2, 2004 elections.
Collins said she found out the conference was scheduled for “before the presidential election and got really concerned. Because I didn’t want anything to take away from the celebratory nature of this summit.”
Collins’ statement is contradicted by a letter to Hunger from Dave Holland, Forest Service director of wilderness resources and chairman of the Interagency Wilderness Policy Council, made up of representatives of the Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey.
Holland’s Dec. 15 letter said the timing “became a concern” with the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, which oversee the five agencies planning the event.
“The Interagency Wilderness Policy Council agreed to move the conference to address the Departments concerns,” Holland wrote.
Forest Service spokesman Joe Walsh acknowledged that the departments of Interior and Agriculture expressed concerns, but Collins made the decision on her own.
“If we don’t want this to be political, it has to be in a neutral time frame,” Walsh said.
Mike Francis, national forest program manager for The Wilderness Society, expressed skepticism Collins made the decision without influence from the Bush administration.
“No bureaucrat in their right mind would make a call to call off a major conference on the 40th (anniversary of The Wilderness Act) without being told by one of the political bosses in the Bush administration to do it,” Francis said.
“It’s hypocritical for the Bush administration’s Forest Service to be holding a wilderness celebration. Somebody might ask them some very tough questions in a political year that they don’t want to answer.”
Groups seeking designation of more wilderness suffered a setback this year when Interior Secretary Gale Norton struck a deal with Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt to discontinue protections for 2.6 million acres of potential wilderness, opening the way for oil and gas drilling.
Hunger said Collins contacted him last weekend in an effort to resurrect the conference, but no decisions are likely until January.
The Wilderness Act was signed in September 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson. It restricts grazing, mining, logging and mechanized vehicles on public lands designated by Congress as wilderness. The areas have grown to 107 million acres, more than the national park system.
The five agencies in the Interagency Wilderness Policy Council each committed $30,000 for the conference, said Tinamarie Ekker, senior policy analyst for Wilderness Watch, who served on the conference program committee. The rest of the $243,600 budget was to come from fees paid by people attending the conference and organizations buying space at the exposition.
Conference planners had hired consultants and negotiated use of the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Ekker said. Those commitments had to be broken.
Conference planners meeting in June in Golden, Colo., considered the election as a factor for scheduling the gathering, and decided it was outweighed by a desire to assure that people working in wilderness areas during the summer could attend and to avoid conflicts with the holiday season, Ekker said.
“Wilderness is not an issue that has any relevance for an election outcome,” Ekker said. “What we were hoping was if we could get the administration on stage before the election saying some good things about wilderness, maybe we could hold them to that after the election.”
At the agencies’ insistence, conservation groups had agreed to keep the conference apolitical, staying away from hot-button issues such as designation of new wilderness areas on federal lands, Ekker said.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Wilderness Act celebration delayed until after election
GRANTS PASS, Ore. – A federally sponsored conference to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Wilderness Act has collapsed after the U.S. Forest Service told conservationists it had to be postponed until after the 2004 election.
Informed that the National Wilderness Summit and Expo scheduled for Oct. 1-7 in Denver could not be held before the Nov. 2 election, conservation groups jointly planning the event dropped out, feeling they were no longer full partners in the event.
“What is frustrating to me is we have leadership at the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture talking about partnerships on public lands,” said Don Hunger, director of national program development for the Student Conservation Association, who served as co-chairman of the conference planning committee. “It pretty much turns that relationship on its head, and says we’re not a partnership.”
Sally Collins, associate director of the Forest Service, the agency’s No. 2 position, said she alone made the decision to postpone the conference out of a general desire to keep it from being overshadowed by the Nov. 2, 2004 elections.
Collins said she found out the conference was scheduled for “before the presidential election and got really concerned. Because I didn’t want anything to take away from the celebratory nature of this summit.”
Collins’ statement is contradicted by a letter to Hunger from Dave Holland, Forest Service director of wilderness resources and chairman of the Interagency Wilderness Policy Council, made up of representatives of the Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey.
Holland’s Dec. 15 letter said the timing “became a concern” with the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, which oversee the five agencies planning the event.
“The Interagency Wilderness Policy Council agreed to move the conference to address the Departments concerns,” Holland wrote.
Forest Service spokesman Joe Walsh acknowledged that the departments of Interior and Agriculture expressed concerns, but Collins made the decision on her own.
“If we don’t want this to be political, it has to be in a neutral time frame,” Walsh said.
Mike Francis, national forest program manager for The Wilderness Society, expressed skepticism Collins made the decision without influence from the Bush administration.
“No bureaucrat in their right mind would make a call to call off a major conference on the 40th (anniversary of The Wilderness Act) without being told by one of the political bosses in the Bush administration to do it,” Francis said.
“It’s hypocritical for the Bush administration’s Forest Service to be holding a wilderness celebration. Somebody might ask them some very tough questions in a political year that they don’t want to answer.”
Groups seeking designation of more wilderness suffered a setback this year when Interior Secretary Gale Norton struck a deal with Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt to discontinue protections for 2.6 million acres of potential wilderness, opening the way for oil and gas drilling.
Hunger said Collins contacted him last weekend in an effort to resurrect the conference, but no decisions are likely until January.
The Wilderness Act was signed in September 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson. It restricts grazing, mining, logging and mechanized vehicles on public lands designated by Congress as wilderness. The areas have grown to 107 million acres, more than the national park system.
The five agencies in the Interagency Wilderness Policy Council each committed $30,000 for the conference, said Tinamarie Ekker, senior policy analyst for Wilderness Watch, who served on the conference program committee. The rest of the $243,600 budget was to come from fees paid by people attending the conference and organizations buying space at the exposition.
Conference planners had hired consultants and negotiated use of the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Ekker said. Those commitments had to be broken.
Conference planners meeting in June in Golden, Colo., considered the election as a factor for scheduling the gathering, and decided it was outweighed by a desire to assure that people working in wilderness areas during the summer could attend and to avoid conflicts with the holiday season, Ekker said.
“Wilderness is not an issue that has any relevance for an election outcome,” Ekker said. “What we were hoping was if we could get the administration on stage before the election saying some good things about wilderness, maybe we could hold them to that after the election.”
At the agencies’ insistence, conservation groups had agreed to keep the conference apolitical, staying away from hot-button issues such as designation of new wilderness areas on federal lands, Ekker said.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
