Norton Resigns After Weakening Land Protection23 March 2006
Between the Lines Q&A A weekly column featuringprogressive viewpoints on national and internationalissues under-reported in mainstream media for releaseMarch 21, 2006 http://www.btlonline.org
NortonResigns from Interior Dept. Post After Weakening ManyProtections for Public Lands
Interview withAnnie Strickler, Sierra Club spokeswoman, conducted byMelinda Tuhus
Interior Secretary Gale Nortonannounced last week that she's stepping down after fiveyears in office. Norton came out of the so-called SagebrushRebellion of conservative Republican property rightsactivists in the West, who advocated opening public landsfor private use and development. When she announced herdeparture, she said she was anxious to return to the privatesector, but many critics say she ran Interior as if she wasstill working in the private sector.
As a result ofNorton's policies, public lands are now more open to gas andoil drilling, logging and subject to weakened environmentalprotections. In her first three years, the number ofdrilling permits issued by the Bureau of Land Managementrose 70 percent. Although blocked by Congress, Nortonpersistently pushed for opening the Arctic National WildlifeRefuge and Alaska's North Slope to oil drilling. She alsosucceeded in derailing bipartisan efforts to limit the useof environmentally destructive snowmobiles in nationalparks.
Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with AnnieStrickler, spokeswoman for the Sierra Club, who discussesNorton's legacy, the timing of her departure, andexpectations for her replacement.
ANNIE STRICKLER: Asfar as the legacy of Gale Norton and the devastation she sleft in her wake, I think the best place to look is ourwestern public lands. The Bureau of Land Management, whichis under the Interior Dept., manages a significant amount offederal property across the West. And those are the placeswhere we ve seen oil and gas drilling become the primarypurpose of land managers under Gale Norton s tenure. It usedto be a very multiple use idea that drove public landsmanagement you know, it was recreation; it was resourceextraction; it was wildlife habitat conservation. Thatchanged very much to promoting just the extractiveindustries. Where wildlife biologists for the BLM used to beout there checking habitat and finding out how wildlife wasdoing on these federal lands, those folks were actuallypulled off those jobs and tasked with expediting energypermits and oil and gas drilling permits. So you ve seenthis huge boom in oil and gas drilling on western publiclands at the expense of
BETWEEN THE LINES: Well, PresidentBush has finally declared that the U.S. is addicted to oil,but he s focused more on the need to not depend on foreignoil, so it makes some kind of sense to increase drilling forgas and oil in the U.S., no?
ANNIE STRICKLER: Well, Ithink the point that President Bush missed in his State ofthe Union address is that it s not just we re addicted toforeign oil, we re addicted to oil -- and you don t kick theoil habit by going and drilling in the Arctic NationalWildlife Refuge, or drilling off our coasts. You kick thehabit by making cars go farther on a gallon of gas, byinvesting in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Theseare all things that are going to help wean us off fossilfuel, which is the true addiction here, and the trueproblem, both in terms of global warming, and just ourenergy consumption. The U.S. uses 25 percent of the world soil, and we sit on less than 3 percent of the world s oilreserves, so we are not going to be able to drill our way toenergy independence. The president sat there and said we areaddicted to oil and we need to do something about it, and aweek later, he turned around and said that as part of hisfederal budget, we should drill in the Arctic Refuge. Andthat was a po
BETWEEN THE LINES: Did she ever gothere?
ANNIE STRICKLER: She did, she made a big show.This is interesting when Gale Norton went to the ArcticRefuge she also went to Prudhoe Bay, which is directly tothe west, and it s where most of the oil from Alaska s NorthSlope comes right now. It s actually such a large industrialcomplex that it s actually visible from space. And it s aplace that Gale Norton and others have always pointed to andsaid, "You know, the oil companies cleaned up their act.They can do this in a sensitive way. We won t harm thecaribou. We won t harm the wildlife. We won t harm theArctic Refuge at all." And there was an oil spill in PrudhoeBay about two weeks ago that s turned out to be the biggestoil spill in the history of the North Slope oil production.So I think that proves Gale Norton and everybody else wrongwho was out there saying they can drill for oil in theArctic Refuge in an environmentally sensitive way. It s justnot possible.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Annie Strickler, whatabout the timing of her departure? Even though most Cabinetofficials don t stay through two entire terms, there s beentalk about her leaving under a cloud related to the JackAbramoff scandal. Her deputy, Steven Griles, has leftalready, but he was kind of a poster boy for someone who wassupposed to be protecting the public interest and was doingthe opposite. Do you think anything might come of thisconnection?
ANNIE STRICKLER: It s entirely possible, butin all honesty, it is not uncommon for Cabinet members tostart departing in the middle or the end of a president ssecond term. So, I don t think the timing is necessarily allthat surprising. She needs to get back to private life even though if her private life is representing mining andtimber companies, she never really left it when she came tothe administration. But that aside, there are some seriousethics concerns and questions dealing with Jack Abramoff andcorruption in Congress that are circling around theDepartment of the Interior, and they stemmed specificallyfrom when Gale Norton was in charge of the department.Steven Griles, who s already departed as you mentioned, wasundersecretary at Department of Interior, and both his nameand Gale Norton s name are circulating with their potentialties to Jack Abramoff.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Are you hopefulthat Gale Norton s successor will be moreenvironment-friendly, or do you think the InteriorDepartment could even go from the frying pan into the fire,so to speak?
ANNIE STRICKLER: Well, I think it s both.We re fully aware that the Bush administration isn t reallyplanning on changing its direction as far as conservationpolicies go. So, even though Gale Norton will be leaving thedepartment, we don t really expect to have her replacementbe anyone whose policies would be friendly towardsconservation and wildlife and wildlands protection. We don treally have too many high hopes for who will be herreplacement. Contact the group at (202) 548-6587 or visittheir website at www.sierraclub.org.
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Melinda Tuhus is a producerof Between The Lines, which can be heard on more than 40radio stations and in RealAudio and MP3 on our website at http://www.btlonline.org. This interview excerpt wasfeatured on the award-winning, syndicated weekly radionewsmagazine, Between The Lines for the week ending March24, 2006. This Between The Lines Q&A was compiled by MelindaTuhus and Anna Manzo.
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