Turks In D.C.

Natural resources

Newt Gingrich seized the headlines last week as he was re-elected speaker of the House of Representatives.

But far more dramatic was the re-election of right-wing Republicans Rep. Don Young and Sen. Frank Murkowski as chairmen of committees dealing with natural resources.

“These two chairmen have been completely out of the mainstream of American public opinion on the environment,” said William H. Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society. “They have been trying to roll back a quarter-century of progress, and we fear that our water, lands and wildlife will be in jeopardy with these two men wielding the gavels.”

A group of Republicans joined The Wilderness Society in the futile call for new leadership in the resources committees. This group is called Republicans for Environmental Protection, P.O. Box 7073,Deerfield, IL 60015, telephone (847) 940-0320. Co-founder Martha Marks can be reached via E-mail at marREP@aol.com/

Young and Murkowski have called for disposing of federal public lands, eviscerating the Endangered Species Act, weakening the Clean Water Act and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development, among other things. , DataTimes