Outdoorsmen remember Secretary Watt
America’s compassion for Ronald Reagan is justified if nothing else than for his charm and effectiveness as a president and world leader.
Even now that’s he’s made the last ride into the sunset, his popularity could spur the nation to ride herd on Alzheimer’s disease, a prospect that could go down as one of the best going-away gifts ever bestowed on the world.
Outdoorsmen, however, must keep their perspective in this period of legend building.
Never lose track of the trail you’ve already been down.
A president is only as great as the men and women around him. To know the whole story about a famous leader, you have to know something about his henchmen.
Americans who understand the wealth and importance of public lands, for recreation as well as prosperity, should never forget the Reagan choice for Secretary of Interior, James Watt.
Of the 2.2 billion acres in the United states, 750 million, or about one third, were public lands that fell under the administration of Secretary Watt, making him potentially the single most influential man in the future of sportsmen or anyone who doesn’t want to find an open pit mine or a no trespassing sign while trying to enjoy the great outdoors.
Hired by the president famed for saying, “If you’ve seen one redwood you’ve seen them all,” Watt is the official who proclaimed, “We inherited an abused land from that administration that was kicked out of office…. What I inherited was a land that had been set aside and deprived of development.”
He was referring to preceding Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus, who later responded, “I don’t think my generation is so hot that it should make all the decisions. I was more concerned that your children be able to make some decisions.”
Andrus is the man who said preserving the environment no longer is a pious ideal, but rather a necessary element of survival.
Watt is the man who, while he might abhor a bird who messes in its nest, thought it would be noble for man to do the same thing.
Sounding like a frontier preacher in 1981 at the Western States Republican Convention in Coeur d’Alene, Watt made one thing clear: Your opinion on public lands was as good as his, as long as you didn’t disagree.
Watt spoke the single tongue of development. Within a few months after taking charge of Interior, Watt’s bluntness had alienated millions of Americans who understood the need for balance in the management of public lands.
Soon, however, Watt turned to double talk.
He said he favored wetlands conservation and acquisition, but he neglected to acquire any significant acreage of fast-dwindling wildlife habitat.
Although he said he was pushing for increased spending in national parks to “rectify the abuse the liberal Democrats have allowed,” the Reagan administration announced in 1981 a 20 percent cut in national park budgets despite 20 percent increases that year in visitation.
Earlier that fall, Watt said, “I think New Mexico can take better care of its own resources than some central agency in Washington run by some bureaucratic hack who’s out in four years.”
But later, Watt, the harbinger of the Sagebrush Rebellion, told Interior employees that when it came to construction of a controversial nuclear waste project in Carlsbad, “I do not believe we can give to the states veto power over the management of federal lands.”
One of Watt’s favorite lines was, “We must restore America to her former greatness.”
More double talk.
Did that mean we should restore America’s air and water to a pre-polluted era when fish were safe for children and pregnant women to eat?
Or did it mean regressing to the days of greatness when the strip miners could run a dredge up trout streams without restraint and turn the land irreparably upside down like they did in West Virginia, and Watt’s home state of Colorado, without setting aside a penny for restoration?
Watt couldn’t change our nation’s strip mining laws, so he cut the money from the division that enforced them.
He couldn’t tell Congress not to appropriate money for buying additional national park land, but he tried to divert that money to develop the parks into Disneylands.
He stopped the listing of new endangered wildlife species and eliminated funding for federal rangeland improvements.
He endorsed a plan to renege the federal government’s responsibility to manage the national wildlife refuge system. This was an unabashed move in his Sagebrush Rebellion philosophy to give a large hunk of federal lands to states and ultimately to the private sector.During the same week of Watt’s visit to the Inland Northwest, in a fortunate coincidence of balance for the outdoorsman, Cecil Andrus, was invited to speak at Gonzaga University.
“This is not a partisan judgment,” Andrus said from his perspective as former Interior secretary and soon-to-be candidate for Idaho governor. “I just think Watt should be replaced with a Republican who understands.”
Andrus believed that Americans could have their cake and eat it, too; that we could develop federal lands without ruining wilderness areas and wildlife habitat.
“Some think if you can’t dig it up or cut it down, it has no value,” he said. “But if you protect soil you have a watershed. You don’t find wildlife in an open pit mine or fish in a silted stream.”
In the wake of Watt’s visit, Andrus had to defend laws such as the National Environmental Protection Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Wilderness Act, and strip mining legislation, all of which had been won with bipartisan support.
“These laws protect cropland, watersheds and wildlife habitat while still leaving an abundance of natural resources to be claimed,” he said.
Too bad Reagan’s legacy couldn’t be enhanced by applauding him for accepting Watt’s resignation. Unfortunately, it was ethnic remarks the Interior secretary made that finally sealed his departure, not the remarkable war he was waging on the sacred ground of public land.
This is history outdoorsmen cannot forget.
As another great communicator, Will Rogers, said, when it comes to the land it’s important to remember, “They ain’t making it no more.”