How Wild Is Our National Environmental Policy?

By Greg Prosen

Aldo Leopold wrestled with the concept that with every loss of wilderness we suffer a loss of part of our American heritage.  Just over four score past, in lamenting the ever diminishing wilderness, he wrote: "Shall we now exterminate this thing that makes us American?" Leopold's concern apparently has been lost on our nation's leaders and lawmakers.

Congress set forth our national environmental policy in an Act which declared, in part, that the Federal Government must act responsibly ("consistent with other considerations of National policy" (and therein lies the rub!!)) so "that the Nation may preserve important historic, cultural, and natural aspects of our national heritage..."  Although Congress thus recognized somewhat obliquely this need to preserve the Wild, it leaves protection of the Wild to be considered as one of the many factors in the environmental impact statement process.  It would appear, however, that sluiced concern for Wilderness, more often than not, is only lost in the more turbid undercurrents of National policy.  In the end, after all the shouting is over, the Wilderness takes a back seat to other overriding needs of society.  True, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), has provided environmentalists with a forum to vent their frustration over the loss of Wilderness, but it does not specifically enunciate a distinct policy, nor mechanism, to protect at least even part of our remaining vestiges of Wilderness areas.  Instead we are left with balancing such needed preservation against our insatiable appetite to devour national resources.  The need to preserve Wilderness must be a keystone of our national environmental policy. It may be said that the Endangered Species Act assuages our need of Wild, but must we totter on the brink of extirpation of a species, often within the shadow of urban towers, before our anguished outcry be heard?  Only Wilderness can truly beget Wild things.

There is presently convened at Washington D.C. a task force, appointed by the House Resources Committee, considering whether any changes are warranted to be made to the NEPA.  It is feared that competing interests may be now lobbying change to ameliorate the great cost and trouble to which they are put each time the necessity for an environmental impact statement raises what they perceive an ugly head.  Although so portrayed as a head to be laid upon the block, it provides the only vigil we have against the increasing inroads into Wilderness and must remain held high.

Now is the time to share your concern with Leopold, by exercising your First Amendment right of petition and writing your Congressman, Senator, or even G.W. himself, praying that NEPA be expanded to explicitly provide for protection of Wilderness.  NEPA, in its present form, represents the minimal bastion against further erosion of Wilderness and must not be diluted by pandering to economic interests. TU's mission to conserve, protect, and restore North American cold water fisheries and their watersheds certainly compels the need for strong commentary not only to preserve NEPA, but to further buttress it against ever increasing incursions into our Wilderness.  To ignore Wilderness threatens the very heart of our National Identity.