Preserving wilderness is not a partisan issue;
Conservation remains a fundamental conservative value

By Anthony Cobb; Knight Ridder Newspapers

Conservative environmentalists. No, that term is not an oxymoron. And as the election season moves into its final weeks, neither party should claim the environmental mantle as its own. Citizens on both sides of the aisle are concerned about the threats to their air, water and wide-open spaces. In fact, half the Republican voters surveyed in one poll consider themselves "environmentalists" and rank protection of the environment as an issue equally as important as protecting family values and ahead of cutting taxes. (Zogby International Poll, 9/8/99). It was a Republican, President Theodore Roosevelt, who began the building of a vast heritage of the wild places that make up our national parks, forests and wildlife refuges. Within these federal lands he set aside, there are still wild places Americans want conserved for generations to come.

Sen. Barry Goldwater, the father of the modern GOP's conservative movement, was a lifelong conservationist. Members of Congress from both parties were in the forefront of the campaign to enact the Wilderness Act of 1964, led by Republican Rep. John Saylor of Pennsylvania. Applying the Wilderness Act, President Ronald Reagan signed more laws to protect parts of America's wilderness than any other president.

Conservative conservationists of all parties are gravely concerned that the important work to conserve the nation's remaining wilderness areas, championed by so many great public servants, remains unfinished and, lately, sorely neglected. Responsible Democrats and Republicans understand that protecting America's publicly owned wildlands is not only the right thing to do, but it is also extremely good business.

Preserving wilderness areas generates sustained income and good jobs for local communities, including commercial fishing and business dependent on tourism, hunting and sport fishing. On the other hand, taxpayer-subsidized commercial logging, road building and mining have destroyed the critical habitat for wildlife on which these enterprises depend. Unless we take action to protect the wilderness that remains, more will be lost.

Today, 38 years after the signing of the Wilderness Act, less than 5 percent of the land base of the United States is protected as wilderness. We can do better than that. Teddy Roosevelt would remind us that we owe a greater duty to future generations.

Americans young and old, on all parts of the political spectrum, in both urban and rural places, understand the importance of wilderness. Everywhere, Americans are increasingly concerned about the loss of open space as our human developments seem to devour the landscape.

Today, tight budgets make the purchase of open space very difficult. All the more reason that we must protect the open spaces we already own: the still-unprotected wilderness of our public lands. As Barry Goldwater would say, this is just good common sense.

Preserving America's heritage of wilderness is not a partisan issue - it is an act of patriotism. Working to save our wilderness is an opportunity to fulfill our generation's responsibility to the future. That is a fundamental conservative value - a fundamental American value.

Candidates of all political stripes should keep this in mind as voters head to the polls.

Anthony Cobb is executive director of the REP Environmental Educational Foundation www.repfoundation.org.

© Copyright 2002 Monterey County Herald