Richard Pombo: “I have been waiting for this amendment to come up for 2 days now that we have been working on this bill. We have talked…”

“I have been waiting for this amendment to come up for 2 days now that we have been working on this bill. We have talked a lot about environmental care, environmental laws, our joint desire to do what is right for our environment; but I think on this amendment my colleagues have the opportunity to see what one extreme example is of an effort to manage our public lands, and that extreme example is the philosophy or ideology that people should not be on our public lands. The way to solve that is to gradually begin to remove them, piece by piece, from our public lands. What this amendment does is go back to a failed policy of the previous administration. A lot has been said about the judge's ruling. I would like to read one quote from the judge. In its rush to give President Clinton lasting notoriety in the annals of environmentalism, the Forest Service's shortcuts, and bypassing the procedural requirements of NEPA, has done lasting damage to the very laws designed to protect the environment. The Forest Service's entire NEPA process was flawed and marred with arbitrary and capricious decisions that resulted from its unreasonably self-imposed, unreasonably short deadline for implementing the roadless rule. The facts are this country has nearly 750 million acres of Federal land. Almost half of that is currently under some kind of conservation status, national park, wilderness, wildlife refuges. It is protected forever for future generations.”