Some of you have doubtless seen this elsewhere, but I thought I'd put it here instead of Life Beyond Fishing, since well, it has to do with fishing. Theodore Roosevelt must be doing warp nine in his grave.
"Flyfisherman Magazine" (December 2004)
by Ralph Cutter
Bushwhack, Ransack, Pillage and Plunder
Four years ago George Bush promised us fly fishers that he would be in our corner; he would be the Sportsman’s President. That was the promise, elections are around the corner, and it is time to revue the fruits of the promise he made to you and me.
"Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely." Ron Arnold, founder, Alliance for America.
In 1996 and again in 1998 the keynote speaker for the radical right's Alliance for America was Mark Rey. President Bush appointed Mark Rey as the Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the Environment. Rey is now responsible for the care and management of our National Forests and Grasslands. His counterpart responsible for nurturing the remainder of our public lands is James Watt's protégé, Gale Norton.
Mark Rey and Gale Norton hold the noose from which dangles our public lands and our natural resources. George Bush's perspective of the environment can be measured by the selection of Rey, Norton, and over thirty other of his hand-picked representatives of extractive corporations to "co-manage" our nation's air, land and water.
The charade has become so transparent that during nomination hearings, Michael Leavitt barely pretended to be an environmental advocate even though he was being considered for director of the Environmental Protection Agency. He was ushered into office by a Republican block and in his first weeks dropped fifty investigations of violations of the Clean Air Act and scrapped new regulations on toxic mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. President Bush hailed Leavitt's actions as a "visionary".
In a little over three years George Bush has set in motion a tsunami of environmental destruction that is unlikely to be completely stopped, much less mitigated in any of our lifetimes. His Secretary of the Interior has declared that not another inch of land will be added to Wilderness. If the administration has its way, this is as good as it will ever get, and we're sliding backwards at a terrifying and accelerating rate.
The Word Game
A political pollster, brilliant spinster and obvious student of George Orwell, Frank Luntz has been instrumental in crafting Bush's public image. Orwell's fictitious Newspeak has been born to reality under Luntz and Bush mouths the words with the confidence of a man who doesn't even realize he's in the con game. Orwell's forced labor prisons became joycamps, death, and peacenap. Bush's clear cutting and air polluting practices have been perverted by Luntzspeak into the Healthy Forests and Clean Skies initiatives. When the administration wants to sell the public on environmental gutting they call it streamlining and the word logging has been replaced with the light-on-the-lips thinning.
A fair balance between the environment and the economy. Safer, cleaner, healthier. Accountability. It will not be easy. Sound science. Common sense approach. and It can be done more wisely, are all Luntz-approved words and phrases developed by teams of psychologists and refined in focus groups for the express purpose of selling Americans on the idea that it is okay, even patriotic, to turn our national lands, air, and water over to industry. When listening for these terms in a Bush speech one quickly realizes that they are meaningless and frequently not even used in context with the message. It is cutting-edge subliminal brainwashing of the American people known in the military as psych-ops.
Clean Skies
Fish need clean air even more than humans do. Airborne pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide mix with atmospheric water and oxygen, cook under the sun, and fall back to earth as sulfuric and nitric acid. Until the Bush administration took office, the Federal Government viewed the effects of acid deposition as undeniably serious. Entire watersheds are devoid of amphibians and trout because the lakes, rivers and streams are now too acidic to support life. But Republican House whip Tom DeLay says of acid deposition, "Acid rain? All you gotta do is pour a little lime in a few lakes". Tailpipe exhaust, industrial emissions and agricultural activity contribute to acid deposition, but a full two thirds of atmospheric sulpher dioxide and over one fourth of the nitrous oxide is generated by coal fired power plants. It is these same coal burning power plants that produce some forty percent, or nearly 50 tons annually, of our mercury pollution.
Mercury is extremely toxic and developing fetuses exposed to tiny amounts can suffer permanent neurological damage. According to the Center for Disease Control 5 million American woman across all socio-economic classes currently harbor dangerous levels of mercury. The primary source of this mercury is from eating fish. Mercury is stored in the flesh and as it moves through the food web the heavy metal becomes increasingly concentrated. Top-level predators such as tuna, trout, and striped bass become toxic mercury sinks.
Under the Clean Air Act industry was to reduce mercury emissions 90% by 2008. According to the EPA the total cost would have been less than 1% of a plant's revenues. Bush pulled the rug out from under the Clean Air Act by unveiling his own "Clean Skies" initiative. Clean Skies was crafted behind closed doors by administration officials coached by coal companies and electric utilities. According to senators in the know, "entire sections of text were lifted verbatim from industry memoranda". At the same time Bush's political appointees at EPA excluded the agency's own professional staff and tossed out a federal advisory panel's input.
EPA staffers said they were told not to undertake the normal scientific and economic studies required by law. Veterans in the EPA say they cannot recall another instance when technical experts were cut out of developing a major regulatory proposal. John Paul, an Ohio Republican who co-chaired the EPA appointed advisory panel said that 21 months of work on mercury was completely ignored.
The Orwellian "Clean Skies" initiative now gives corporate polluters 15 years to cut emissions 70%, instead of 3 years to cut 90%. Clean Skies also makes it clear that carbon dioxide is not to be considered a pollutant and therefore denies the EPA any authority to regulate its emissions. The overwhelming body of science points to carbon dioxide as the primary pollutant responsible for global warming, but as Gale Norton says, we shouldn't be in any hurry to do anything about it. "Even if the global warming theory is real, we will do more long-term harm to the planet than good by rushing forward with half-solutions." In the meantime, the energy corporations are saving billions of dollars and you and I and our planet are paying the price.
Despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, many in the administration choose to look at anything but the facts to bolster their pro polluter agenda. As spinmaster Luntz advised the Republicans, "You need to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate." Tom DeLay declared that global warming is "junk science" at its very core because it is based on data that dates back hundreds of thousands of years. He quotes the Bible which states the world is only 6,000 years old. DeLay says, "It is only the arrogance of man for man to think he can change the climate of the world".
Healthy Forests
Approximately 95% of America's old growth forests have been logged. Three quarters of the small fraction of old growth remaining resides on National Forest land where it shelters endangered species, protects watersheds, and most importantly gives us a living window into the past where scientists, foresters and the common person alike can experience what a real forest is supposed to look, smell, sound, and feel like.
To protect the intrinsic values of the remaining old growth, one of the most exhaustive rule making processes in American history was undertaken. Three years of public hearings and over a million public comments resulted in the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (RACR). Before it was finalized, the rule was subjected to yet another million public comments. Of the total 2.2 million public comments received, 95% were in strong favor of environmental protection. As Carl Pope of the Sierra Club said, "The need for conservation was clear, the science was sound, and public support overwhelming". In a nutshell, RACR prohibited new roads from being cut into virgin forests.
Past timber industry gun, and Bush's appointee to oversee the US Forests Service, Mark Rey claimed that environmental regulations needed to be "re-examined, reviewed, and re-opened".... Rey declared that RARC was "flawed" and invited states to "seek relief for exceptional circumstances by suing his own Forest Service. Alaska accepted the offer, sued over RARC, and the Bush administration quickly wrote them an exemption to the Roadless rule. Western governors were invited by Rey's office to join Alaska in seeking exemptions for their states.
The reaction from the timber industry was understandably ecstatic, but perhaps not quite so expected was the immediate uproar from hard core GOP sportsmen who realized they had been sold out by their president. The Tongass National Forest contains the largest remaining tract of roadless old growth in the nation. It is a land of misty fjords, cloud raking peaks, and ridge after ridge of virgin forest, and clean rivers . . . over 5,000 rivers in the Tongass support trout and salmon. It is home to some of the most spectacular fish and wildlife populations in the world. With Rey’s approval and Bush's encouragement, fifty industrial clear cutting operations are setting siege on the Tongass.
The Northern Sportsmen Network sent a petition of outrage to the Forest Service. It was signed by 470 gun clubs from across the nation including 40 from Texas itself. The NSN constituency is typified by Greg Petrich who organized the petition. Petrich is a life long Republican with a degree in gunsmithing and a love for the outdoors. Petrich says, "I respect Bush but I just can't believe he is doing this. The right thing is so obvious, it's a no-brainer. This is an unparalleled part of the American landscape . . . we urge the Department (of Agriculture) to leave the Tongass protections intact."
The truly obscene twist about opening up the Tongass (and our other roadless National Forests) is that it will cost the government tens of millions of dollars for the privilege of having our wildlands destroyed. The US Forest Service itself estimates that largely due to tourism, hunting and fishing, a Tongass tree left standing is worth thirty times more than when it is converted into lumber. In 2002, Tongass logging revenue netted the government $1.2 million, yet the US Forest Service spent $36. million to build roads to access the timber. In twenty years over $1. billion has been spent by the government in the Tongass. It is nothing less than a massive welfare plan for the timber industry. With a deficit of over $500 billion, one would think that Bush would be looking for ways to save taxpayer's money.
Congress, sensitive to the public’s growing ire over Bush's predilection for deficit spending, threatened to ban "below-cost" logging contracts. Before it could act and anger Bush's timber lobby, the perfect solution was presented by Carl Rove and Frank Luntz. Timber harvest plans were renamed "fire prevention plans", and logging was renamed "fuels reduction" or more simply "thinning". The taxpayer anger over welfare logging was assuaged and the timber industry got their subsidized lumber. To hoodwinked communities it even appeared that their fire safety was being taken seriously.
One of the largest communities at-risk for wildfire is the urban interface of Los Angeles County where it abuts the Angeles National Forest. Unfortunately the Angeles doesn't produce the massive stands of old growth trees so lusted by the timber industry. The Angeles received virtually nothing in "fire prevention" funding while miniscule townships in rural Alaska received more "fire prevention" monies than all of Southern California combined. While the urban wildland interface is choked with brush and low value trees waiting to burn, tax funded roads are winding deep into the wilderness so that multi national corporations can cut 1,000 year old trees in the name of fire prevention. In May, at the start of the 2004 fire season, the Bush Administration cut the US Forest Service fire fighting task force by 30%, in part, so it could redirect fire suppression funds toward wilderness road building for the timber industry.
Clean, Responsible Energy
The Bush energy policy is not so much a policy as it is a mandate, "find more fossil fuels, exploit it, and burn it." Monies target for researching alternative fuels have been adroitly redirected into drilling operations. Conservation measures have been scraped as "feel good" policies pushed on the American public by environmental extremists.
In the process of kowtowing to the energy industry, Bush has alienated a wide swath of Rocky Mountain sportsmen, ranchers, and urbanites alike. Methane may be a "clean" fuel, but the practice of extracting it is anything but. Coal bed methane (CBM) extraction is a process where massive quantities of water are pumped out of the ground to allow trapped methane deposits to be captured. The pumping depletes ancient groundwater reserves and much of the extracted water is loaded with heavy metals, various salts and other toxic pollutants. At a cost of about a nickel per cubic foot, this toxic effluent could be injected back into the aquifer; however, it is cheaper to simply flush it into the watershed" including some of the finest trout streams in America.
The process of extracting the CBM pocks the landscape with polluting wellheads and a lattice of roads that shred across private landholdings of cities, homeowners, and ranchers who rarely own the rights to the minerals under their feet. The growth in development has been monumental. When Bush was elected some 5,000 wells dotted the Powder River Basin" in 6 years there could be over 50,000. Exploitation throughout the Mountain West is exploding with a gold rush fervor and never-look-back mentality encouraged by the Bush Administration.
Historically conservative Republicans are turning on their president. Tweeti Blancett ran the Bush campaign in Garfield County, New Mexico (home of the San Juan River); she feels bitterly betrayed by the Sportsmen's President who was sold her and her constituency down the tubes in favor of big energy. In the High Country News Blancett stated, "I once believed that if the President knew about the damage done to our land by the energy industry, the damage would cease." It has only gotten worse, and worse in a big way. "We once used to run 600 cows . . . today, we can barely keep 100. Grass and shrubs are now roads, drill pads, or scars left by pipeline paths. Our cows get run over by trucks servicing the wells or they get poisoned when they lap up the sweet anti-freeze leaking out of unfenced compressors."
In Choteau, Montana, Stoney Burke, a lifelong conservative Republican spoke of CBM, "I'm not an environmentalist . . . but I would consider anyone who would violate this (Rocky Mountain) front my enemy. I guarantee you that if this thing (CBM drilling) is approved, there will be a lot of us lying down in front of bulldozers."
In Cheney"s own conservative home state, Wyoming, Republican Eli Bebout lost his position in the house after declaring CBM was good for the state. Bebout was ousted by a Democrat who ran on a platform opposing Bush CBM policies. He called for a "Wyoming way" of extraction that protected local communities as well as the environment.
No Salmon Left Behind
Trout and salmon like water, clean water, and plenty of it. Unfortunately fish don’t buy votes, so when push comes to shove big-monied interests get the nod. In an effort to steer votes toward an unpopular Oregon Republican senator (Bush lost Oregon by less than 1%) Karl Rove and the President himself traveled to the Beaver State to assure them that it was in the best interests of corporate agriculture to support Senator Smith. "We'll do everything we can to make sure water is available for those of you that farm", promised Bush.
Rove made several trips back to Oregon to meet with agricultural interests and subsequently the White House formed a cabinet level task force to rationalize taking negotiated water from fish and wildlife and giving it to agriculture. According to Michael Kelly, a National Marine Fisheries Service biologist, NMFS was subjected to direct political pressure to accept the Bush plan and ordered to suppress scientific studies suggesting otherwise. We were directed to get the "right" results. Kelly received protection under the Federal Whistle blower law and ultimately resigned from the service. In his resignation letter he writes, "I speak for many of my fellow biologists who are embarrassed and disgusted by the agency's apparent misuse of science".
Three months after Bush's visit to Oregon, Gale Norton stood cheek to jowl with Senator Smith and opened the gates to divert water from the Klamath River into the neighboring sagebrush. It was a well choreographed in-your-face demonstration to Indian, environmental, and fishing interests that despite long standing agreements, the agricultural base would get 100% water deliveries and the others could fight among themselves over what puddles might be left.
Throughout the summer biologists warned the Bush Administration that too much water was being diverted and a disaster was looming. In September over 33,000 Chinook, coho, and steelhead lay gasping in the tepid pools of what water remained in the Lower Klamath River. It was one of the largest human caused fish kills in American history. It was apparent to the most casual observer that the fish had run out of water. California Department of Fish and Game biologists confirmed the obvious. But the Bush Administration called the fish kill a mystery and blamed it on everything from “overcrowding”, to disease. When a Federal investigation concluded that, yes, lack of water had killed the fish, it was suppressed for months before being leaked to the public. A Federal judge ruled the water diversion a violation of the Endangered Species Act, but self-righteous administration officials were quick to point out that only a narrow portion of the biological opinion was violated.
Salmon and trout face a gauntlet of threats laid down by the administration in a concerted effort to give natural resources to corporate lobbyists. Despite common sense and a multitude of studies including the National Academy of Sciences report declaring critical habitat "an essential component of any program to protect endangered species". In May 2003, the Administration simply declared that designating critical habitat for endangered species had no value for protecting wildlife. When two US Fish and Wildlife reports came to the conclusion that critical habitat was, indeed, critical, Gale Norton had them withheld from the public.
Up until Bush, a species listed as "co-sensitive" was managed in large part as if it were threatened. The administration's new Forest Management plan doesn't treat sensitive species any differently than it does one that is abundant. The plan also includes verbiage that allows a threatened species to be exterminated from its historic range if a viable population can be found elsewhere (a zoo for example?).
Bush adopted another rule that authorizes the Forest Service or BLM to use their own in-house biologists to determine if an endangered species would be harmed under proposed land use practices. In other words, the agency whose primary job is logging, mining or grazing would make the determination if such practices are harmful. No longer would US Fish and Wildlife or National Marine Fisheries experts be consulted prior to clear cutting along the river bank above endangered salmon spawning grounds.
In another blow targeted directly at Pacific salmon but with far reaching ramifications elsewhere, the Bush Administration, despite a bedrock of scientific evidence to the contrary, declared that hatchery fish could be counted as "natural" fish to determine the health of the species. This ploy has long been the proposed love child of Mark Rutzick a timber industry lawyer from Portland, Oregon. Rutzick was suggested for the position as Legal Advisor to the National Marine Fisheries Service by none other than Senator Gordon H. Smith (remember Norton cheek to jowl diverting the Klamath into the sagebrush?). Evidence is abundantly clear that hatcheries have contributed to the demise of natural populations of salmon. Administration officials bucked input from their own biologists by announcing, "Just as natural habitat provides a place for fish to spawn and to rear, also hatcheries can do that."
"Spill" is the seasonal release of water over dams to assist salmon smolts in their journey seaward. Without spill to redirect them, baby salmon get funneled into penstocks and minced by hydro electric turbines. Eliminating spill in 2004 will reduce returns of adult salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River by at least 10,000 in both 2006 and 2007. Every drop of water released for salmon translates in lost revenue for the power industry. Despite a tidal wave of evidence supporting the positive effects of spill, the Bush Administration prefers a lone study funded by the Northwest Power Planning Council that questions the effectiveness of the practice. The Luntzism, “You need to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate”, can be found at every bend of the river.
On a pleasant fall evening in Saginaw, Michigan, President George W. Bush announced to a crowd of supporters, "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully". He has yet to unveil that roadmap for peace.
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