George H.W. Bush: “I will resist any effort to stop hunting and fishing on these public lands. You know, I had a marvelous experience--not…”

“I will resist any effort to stop hunting and fishing on these public lands. You know, I had a marvelous experience--not shared it with my friend the Lieutenant Governor, Johnny Morris, and others. But just the other day up in the Sequoia area in California, I met there with a group of kids that came from the inner city of Los Angeles. We sat around in a little picnic area, and I started listening to these kids talk about their experience with gangs, being drummed in, beaten in, and then beaten out. If they go into the gang they have to be beaten up before they go into it; when they go out they get beaten up and then their families threatened. Here were these kids sitting in the majesty of this sequoia grove, seeing the outdoors for the first time, understanding the joys of nature from which they've been sheltered because of their own underprivilege and because of their own backgrounds. They talked about the joy of camping out the night before and being with their--sitting around a little campfire talking to the other kids about their family problems. And that little incident brought home to me more clearly than anything I've done, except for a little bass fishing with some friends here, the need really to keep open, and still preserve, but to keep open these lands for sporting purposes, for fishing, for camping, for hunting. So we are not going to permit in the name of environmental practice a shutting down of these areas to those who really need to experience the same joy those kids felt. I really feel strongly about it, and I pride myself on stewardship of our environmental resources, our environment. But I just don't think we can go to the extremes in the name of the environment, whether it's in this, trying to deny hunting or fishing to these areas, or whether it's to shut down businesses where families are needlessly thrown out of work. I think of the endangered species. We're going through a very important debate and an important discussion of how do you preserve the endangered species and yet not say to a family, ``Look, you all just aren't going to be able to make a living anymore.'' I feel as President a certain stewardship for that; I really do. We're trying to find a proper balance, and balance is a key word in all of this. But just to say you're going to preserve public lands by denying hunting and fishing, I'm strongly opposed to that.”