Bush Heads Back to Nature, Reopening Debate : Environment: He hikes in forest, proclaims he is best able to balance protection, development.

With the Democrats about to nominate the author of a best-selling book on the environment as their vice presidential candidate, President Bush on Tuesday hiked in a California national forest that owes its protected status to Theodore Roosevelt, the original “environmental President.”

But, in seeking to demonstrate his own proclaimed fondness for hugging trees, Bush reopened the debate over the proper balance between environmental protection and economic development.

The controversy is one that Democrats and Republicans appear to be developing as central to their White House campaigns--linking it to the economy and its impact on jobs. The Bush team is preparing to portray Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee, who will be the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate, as an environmental radical. And the Democrats are likely to focus on the impact the Administration’s relaxation of regulations has had on health and natural resources.

In one of the most telegenic settings for a presidential appearance, Bush insisted: “This is not an election-year event. My interest in the outdoors transcends any election year. I’ve always been an outdoorsman, always been a sportsman.”

Emerging from a quiet weekend at his family vacation home on the Maine coast, Bush flew across the country--and about as far physically and spiritually as he could get from Midtown Manhattan where the Democratic National Convention is taking place--to “honor the giant sequoias,” in the words of one forest district ranger. The President took a 55-minute hike past several dozen of the ancient trees 6,500 feet up in the Sierra Nevada.

Speaking at a ceremony at which he signed a proclamation protecting pockets of land around the sequoias from timber and mineral development, Bush decried those--whom he did not name--who “flaunt their commitment with these sound bites.”

“I’ve proven mine through sound . . . policy proposals,” he said in the midst of the forest.

If that was not sound-bite enough, he described his own approach as “a new environmentalism that harnesses the power of the marketplace.”

He was referring to Administration efforts to provide financial incentives to businesses that practice conservation and avoid manufacturing processes that pollute the air and waterways.

“The fact is, only a growing economy can generate the resources we need to take care of our natural assets,” he said, reflecting the heart of the argument over whether the nation can afford to protect its environment, or whether by failing to do so, it will end up squandering its resources.

Despite Bush’s protests that the event had nothing to do with politics, others traveling with him were less reluctant to contrast his Administration’s record with that of Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who will accept the Democratic presidential nomination tonight.

Aboard Air Force One, William K. Reilly, director of the Environmental Protection Agency, said that “Gov. Clinton recognized the need to shore up his own environmental record” when he chose Gore as his running mate.

Clinton has been criticized for lax enforcement of pollution regulations affecting the financially and politically powerful chicken farmers in his state, whose birds produce a waste product in such quantity that it runs off the land where it is spread as fertilizer and is polluting streams.

Critics of Bush’s record, however, point to changes in the Clean Water Act that would open 50 million acres of once-protected land to development, the recent interpretation of the Clean Air Act that would limit public review of private companies’ air pollution plans and proposals that would limit restrictions on the disposal of hazardous waste.

The backdrop chosen for Bush to sign his proclamation was a sequoia estimated to be 1,800 to 2,000 years old. The forest is the 10th largest national forest in California, covering 1.1 million acres. But its 38 protected giant sequoia groves make it probably the best known. It was established as a national forest by an executive order signed by Roosevelt in July, 1908.

The stop here was the second on a brief tour of some of the nation’s most scenic locations--from the rocky Maine coast to this forest; from San Diego, where he met later in the day with Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and attended the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, to the Wyoming ranch of Secretary of State James A. Baker III in the Rocky Mountains, where he plans to spend the next two days.

Even before Bush arrived, his visit drew the attention of the Democrats.

Gore, ridiculing Bush for having said in 1988 that he would become the “environmental President,” said at a Sierra Club breakfast in New York’s Central Park: “George Bush once portrayed himself as the environmental President, but he can’t do that anymore without wincing.”

Gore, who led the Senate delegation to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro last month, said Bush “is as phony as a three-dollar bill” in presenting himself as a defender of the environment.

He said that previous Republican Presidents, starting with Roosevelt and including Richard M. Nixon, had a far better record on the environment than Bush or his predecessor, Ronald Reagan.

Accusing Bush of lacking leadership at the recent earth summit, Gore added: “The President of the United States went down there and stonewalled our people and the rest of the world. . . .”

That criticism was the price Bush paid for a visit intended to quietly turn some attention to his own campaign in the midst of the Democratic hoopla. At the signing ceremony, the President faced a phalanx of cameras, U.S. Forest Service officials and politicians from the mountain communities.

He touted his record: more convictions of violators of environmental protection laws in the past three years than in the previous 18, doubled funding for national parks and outdoor recreation and increased acreage devoted to the wilderness system.

“Some will look at the record and say it isn’t enough. I have a surprise for them,” he said. “I couldn’t agree more.”

Times staff writer William J. Eaton contributed to this story from New York.