News from the National Wilderness 40th
Anniversary Conference
October 10-13, 2004 at the Fort William Henry Hotel and Conference Center, Lake George
Wilderness protection awards go to two Adirondack champions;
Wilderness conferees exhorted to be bold, steadfast in support
Two long-time champions of the Adirondack Park and protection of the state Forest Preserve were honored in October by the state's conservation community. A third champion of the nation's wilderness exhorted conservationists to be bold and steadfast in support of wilderness, despite the assault on the nation's public lands in the last four years in the name of energy independence.
The Howard Zahniser Adirondack Award is presented annually by the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, and is named for Howard Zahniser, the author of the 1964 landmark bill creating a National Wilderness Preservation System. This year it was conveyed in association with the National Wilderness 40th Anniversary Conference held in Lake George Oct. 10-13, 2004.
The 2004 Howard Zahniser Adirondack Award went to Peter A.A. Berle, president emeritus of the National Audubon Society and former State Assemblyman and Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation; and to Peter Paine Jr., an original and the longest serving member of the Adirondack Park Agency, and principal author of the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan and state's Wild, Scenic and Recreation Rivers Act. Both men spoke warmly about the meaning of this award and about their achievements along with many others in the "good fight" that is continuing.
Zahniser was executive secretary of the Wilderness Society from 1945 until his death in 1964. Zahniser modeled the 1964 National Wilderness bill on the 'Forever Wild' clause of the New York State Constitution, Article 14. He was a close friend, ally and summer neighbor of Paul Schaefer in Bakers Mills in the southern Adirondacks.
Schaefer, a Vice President of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks for forty years and a legend in Adirondack and Forest Preserve activism for seven decades until his death in 1996, conceived of this Zahniser Adirondack Award for people who have done the most to uphold the 'Forever Wild' clause and promote protection of the wilderness concept. Today the Wilderness Act has designated and protects 106 million acres of public land, much of it in the national parks. However, this national act does not include the three million acre New York State-owned Forest Preserve in the Adirondack and Catskill parks, 1.2 million acres of which is officially classified by the state as Wilderness, much of the remainder as Wild Forest.
Keynote speaker at the award dinner was Congressman Maurice Hinchey, representing a large area of New York from the Catskills across the Southern Tier, and former State Assembly member chairing the Environmental Conservation Committee. Hinchey told the audience of 250 wilderness activists that he was "proud to have fought to protect wilderness from Florida to Alaska and to preserve the integrity of public lands in between. There is no more profound an achievement that I can think of as a Congressman than to ensure the permanent protection of America's wild lands." Hinchey added that wilderness "is one of the most profoundly far-sighted and enduring legacies we can leave."
He described his recent efforts in Congress to protect massive areas of public lands in Utah from mining and forestry, lambasting the Bush Administration's environmental record and the environmental failures of Republican Congressional leadership. In particular, he said that "the current political climate with regard to our natural resources is a far cry from the bi-partisanship that marked the passage of the Wilderness Act 40 years ago. Conservation has a strong bi-partisan history and tradition, but there is little semblance of that in the current polarized political environment.
"Without a doubt. President Bush's most enduring environmental legacy of his one term will be his wholesale evisceration of protections for western public lands. The Bush Administration has removed a net of 44.5 million acres from protection. While the Clinton Administration designated over nine million acres of wilderness the Bush Administration has only signed into law 538,000 acres of newly protected wilderness over the past four years -- the fewest of any president since the Wilderness Act passed."
Hinchey continued: "For four years the Bush Administration has worked to strip protections from 60 million acres of roadless national forests. The ease with which it (the roadless policy) was repealed is a reminder to me of the limits of administrative protection and why we need stronger statutory protection such as the Wilderness Act."
Hinchey continued: "Never before have we had such hostility towards wilderness from an administration. They have reversed 40 years of federal wilderness policy and seem intent on dragging us back to the 19th century in terms of management - that the frontier is still open. It is an understatement to say they are squarely on the side of the extractive industry. The Bush Administration persists in the fantasy that we are going to drill our way to energy independence on our public lands. The longer that this myth prevails the more dependent we become on foreign sources of energy. Our national security argues for leaving our domestic resources in the ground unless we direly need them, not in using every last drop as fast as possible. Unprotected BLM wilderness lands all over the West unfortunately are ground zero in the Administration's grand plan for remaking the western landscape as a sacrifice zone for energy development. Given all that they have succeeded in doing administratively, I shudder to think about what they would dream up in a second term."
Hinchey explained that "this Administration and Congressional majority are a devious bunch when it comes to the environment. They have been able to temper the expressed zealotry of their predecessors, toned down the rhetoric - they talk about protecting 'roadless values', 'wilderness characteristics' and 'clear skies'. We know these innocuous phrases are actually cynical doublespeak for gutting true protections. The sad truth is we have a monolithic government including a complicit Congress. This lack of oversight has fostered a climate of impunity. There is a prevalent and disturbing view in the majority that the government owns too much land and that there are too many restrictions on the lands we own - they want a plan to dispose of all the supposed excess."
"Although this has been a challenging four years for all of us who care about wilderness, we have many opportunities. There are a lot of wilderness quality lands out there that endure and await protection. The wilderness movement has a record of winning hard fought campaigns.
"So be ambitious, bold and steadfast in your vision. Continue to build popular support and broaden the constituency for wilderness in Washington and around the country. This is a great and vibrant citizen's movement and I'm very proud to be a part of this effort with you. We are engaged in an idealistic venture, one of hope and selfless patriotism that has immense benefits for our nation."