The Wilderness Blog

Babbitt’s Radical Idea: Save Ecosystems

By Hillary Rosner, 9-27-05

The day after the House Resources Committee voted 26 to 12 in favor of legislation that would seriously weaken the Endangered Species Act, Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt spoke in Boulder about the need for a radically new form of federal and local land use planning. Babbitt's new book Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America, assesses the "ongoing destruction of the national landscape" and calls for a national land use plan that puts the environment first. Amazingly enough, Babbitt seemed optimistic that such a thing is possible—though, he emphasized, "Not in this session of Congress, not under this President."

Babbitt, who also served two terms as governor of Arizona, called the devastation of New Orleans and the surrounding areas a "textbook example" of "complete absence of attention to land use planning." "It's the result of a century-old national land use policy," he said in an informal talk at the University of Colorado's law school, "that says we will do river management, flood control, and transportation to facilitate short-term development, without any consideration of the systematic land-use consequences."

A wilderness and open-space champion, Babbitt spearheaded the creation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument using the Antiquities Act, which gives presidents authority to "declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest…to be national monuments." (The monument celebrates its ninth anniversary this month.) In his book, Babbitt underscores the need for presidents to take a lead in creating public lands policy—while also emphasizing local and regional accountability. ("Why demonize land developers," he asks, "when the real problem is the pervasive failure of state and local governments to control sprawl through meaningful land use regulations?")

Babbitt told the Boulder audience that environmentalists and developers must come together on two key fronts: They must oppose all federal highway funding that does not require states to set aside open space, and they must oppose all federal water projects, including flood control, unless they come with watershed protection plans. The latter, he said, "is a red light directed at the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation."

An audience member posed the practical question, how on earth would you accomplish something like this? In an era when even House Democrats are abandoning the environment left and right (evidence Rep. Richard Pombo's ESA changes and the vote to drill in ANWR), it's a fair question. Babbitt suggested several strategies, highlighting the need to move forward on both the local and federal fronts. Learn from local success stories (several of which are in his book). Oppose Corps of Engineers projects. Make this a values debate. "The position of environmentalists should be, 'We're opposed to all new roads,'" he said. The same day, a story in the Salt Lake Tribune chronicled the latest development in the Roadless Rule battle, in which the Utah governor's office "unveiled an ambitious, aggressive plan to claim old Jeep and mining roads across federal land in every county of the state."

"The moment for change will come," Babbitt said, seeming like he believed it though I always find it tough to see past the present. "But we've got to have a larger agenda than saying we're defending the Endangered Species Act."

Among Babbitt's ideas for a more environmentally minded national land-use plan is increased consolidation of fragmented backcountry BLM lands, accomplished by trading developable parcels in or near cities for land with greater conservation value. Concentrated islands in an archipelago of sprawl, he said, are better than an unbroken ocean of sprawl.

With Congress on a mission to weaken environmental laws, rather than strengthen them, and with open space and particularly wilderness constantly under threat, it is difficult to imagine a time in the future when Babbitt's vision could even make it onto a serious national agenda. But then, it was less than five years ago that Babbitt left Interior after a flurry of 11th-hour executive orders intended to secure President Clinton's environmental legacy. Five years is a very short time. Maybe Babbitt is right that attention to the environment is cyclical in American politics. Maybe, as he said, "a galvanizing series of events" will turn heads. Perhaps even a couple of hurricanes.

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