The executive branch isn't budging from its stands against an off-highway vehicle measure in North Carolina and wilderness measures in California and Oregon despite pressure from Capitol Hill.
Seeking to reopen the Cape Hatteras National Seashore to off-highway vehicle (OHV) use, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) pushed H.R. 6233, which would reverse a judge's decision on a lawsuit from environmental groups that invalidated the National Park Service's interim management strategy, under which off-roading was permitted.
Reacting to the ruling, a compromise was reached that closes seashore ramps to OHVs from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. and marks protective areas around nesting grounds for shorebirds. According to Jones, locals in Dare County were given little input into the compromise and forced to sign it to prevent beach closings during the height of the tourist season. By sticking their noses where they didn't belong, Jones added, environmentalists had derailed a successful history of cooperation between the county and the National Park Service.
"This is a bill that reinstates common sense," Jones said yesterday at a National Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee hearing. "These lands should be managed by elected officials and by the National Park Service, and not by a federal judge who wasn't elected by anybody."
The National Park Service, however, supports abiding by the compromise agreement until permanent regulations can be drafted because it provides better habitat protection on Hatteras' dunes, according to Daniel Wenk, deputy director of the Park Service.
The Park Service took a similar stance on S. 3113, a comparable Senate measure introduced by Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.). The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee yesterday rejected, 11-12, an attempt to send S. 3113 to the floor.
Forest Service resists land exchange, wilderness designation along Pacific Coast
Representatives were also disappointed when the administration refused to fully endorse bills to expand wilderness designations and "wild and scenic river status" designations in California and Oregon.
Rep. Howard McKeon (R-Calif.) pushed H.R. 6156, which would designate nearly a half million acres in California as wilderness and confer 52 miles of wild and scenic river status in California, but received only limited support from the Forest Service.
Forest Service Deputy Chief Joel Holtrop said that while the agency supported the intent of the bill, it opposed the bill in present form because it did not clarify management responsibilities and because some of the designations did not meet the criteria -- a stance that mirrored the service's analysis of H.R. 6156's companion legislation in the Senate, S. 3069 from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). The Senate Energy Committee approved S. 3069 at yesterday's markup.
The Forest Service took a similar stance on H.R. 6290, from Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), which would designate about 130,000 acres surrounding Oregon's Mount Hood as wilderness and designate about 80 miles of a state river as wild and scenic, supporting the designation on some plots but labeling others ineligible.
But the greatest outcry came from Rep. Peter Defazio (D-Ore.) when the Forest Service requested that action be delayed on his bill, H.R. 6291, until more research could occur.
Defazio's bill would transfer about 4,070 acres of land from the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest to the National Park Service's Oregon Caves National Monument, a move DeFazio noted had been proposed repeatedly in the past 60 years, each time thwarted by calls for further evaluation.
"This is a clear case of paralysis by analysis," Defazio said, accusing the Forest Service -- strapped by the high costs of fire suppression -- of continuing to insist on control over land it lacked the resources to adequately manage.
Holtrop countered that, given the number of times the transfer had been proposed and denied, that it was a complicated matter that merited exhaustive review.
NPS, Forest Service weigh in on other land-use legislation
The National Park Service expressed conditional support for H.R. 3114 to create a commemorative trail connected to the Women's Rights National Historical Park, provided that provisions calling for specifically targeted grants for the project were scrapped.
NPS recommended action be deferred for further study on H.R. 6470, which would incorporate historical battlefields from the War of 1812 in Michigan into a national park.
The Forest Service conditionally supported H.R. 4162, which would exchange 71 acres from San Bernardino County in California with 53 acres from San Bernardino National Forest to the county to use for biomass and recycling activities, provided amendments were added to protect federal taxpayer investments.
The Forest Service opposed H.R. 6628, which would transfer about 880 acres of land surrounding Connell Lake in Alaska now owned by the Forest Service to the local government, the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, calling it unnecessary.
It supported H.R. 6553 to revise the 1986 law dealing with use of national forests for ski areas, which currently mentions only nordic and alpine skiing, to include other snow sports such as snowboarding.