Environmentalists Get Their Wish: Babbitt Named as Interior Secretary : Reform: Improved prospects are seen for Western water, new wilderness areas, protection of park land--and the endangered spotted owl.

After an unnerving couple of days waiting for Bill Clinton to shuffle the last pieces of his Cabinet into place, environmentalists on Thursday got what they most wanted from their Santa Claus in Little Rock, Ark.: Bruce Babbitt as secretary of the Interior.

“It is one nice Christmas present, I’ll tell you that,” said Ben Beach, vice president of the Wilderness Society, one of the mainline environmental groups that had implored Clinton to name the former Arizona governor to the post.

“With Bruce Babbitt at the helm of the Interior Department,” added Ali Webb, associate director of the League of Conservation Voters, which Babbitt has served as president for the last two years, “a new day is dawning for our public lands.”

While his nomination was cheered by environmentalists, he is certain to have sharp differences with powerful groups such as the National Cattlemen’s Assn., the mining industry and other development interests.

The American Forest Resource Alliance, however, which represents forest products industries and is often a foe of the wilderness organizations, recommended Senate confirmation of Babbitt.

The nominee has “demonstrated knowledge and experience about natural resource issues,” and is “expected to share President Clinton’s dual concerns for the environment and the economy,” said Mark Rey, president of the alliance.

Almost from the moment of Clinton’s election victory, Babbitt, 54, had been considered the most likely prospect, but during the final days it appeared that the job might go instead to Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), with Babbitt becoming the United States’ trade representative.

The environmental community would not have been unhappy with Richardson, Beach said, “but Babbitt is Babe Ruth to us. It was very hard to get excited about any other candidate because he has so much to offer.”

Clinton himself was similarly effusive about his friend from Phoenix, calling him a worthy successor to the legendary Harold Ickes, who served President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Interior Department.

Babbitt’s arrival in the elegant secretary’s suite now occupied by New Mexican Manuel Lujan Jr. is expected to invigorate reform movements that have seen environmentalists repeatedly fall short of objectives in recent years.

Specifically, environmentalists see greatly improved prospects for sharp increases in fees for grazing livestock on public lands in the West and for changing hard-rock mining laws that have been on the books since the Ulysses S. Grant Administration.

They also predict that the new Administration will improve the chances of creating new wilderness areas--in the California desert and environmentally rich areas of Utah, Colorado and Montana.

Babbitt’s presence at Interior also is expected to alter department policy on issues such as federal water allocation in the West, protection of national parks, and perhaps the daunting and furiously controversial matter of how to protect old-growth forests and the spotted owl.

His predecessors during the Ronald Reagan Administration, chiefly James Watt, were widely criticized for providing too little restraint on the exploitation of such public resources.

“When Bruce Babbitt moves into he secretary’s office, the ghost of James Watt will, at long last, be exorcised,” said George Frampton Jr., president of the Wilderness Society.

The scion of wealthy Flagstaff family that made its initial fortune by running Indian trading posts, Babbitt began his political career as a reform-minded attorney general in 1974. When Gov. Wesley H. Bolin died in 1978, the state was without a lieutenant governor, and Babbitt became chief executive.

He was subsequently elected to two terms, and in 1988 made a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It was a course that would have seemed far-fetched for a young man who had majored in geology as an undergraduate at Notre Dame University and had gone on to gain a master’s degree in geophysics from the University of Newcastle in England.

His plan in those years had been to go into the mining industry, but he reportedly changed his mind after witnessing the exploitation of miners during a visit to Bolivia.

In his term as Arizona governor, Babbitt, an avid skier and outdoorsman, and his lawyer wife Hattie became close friends with Bill and Hillary Clinton of Arkansas. Since leaving office, he has been a partner in the law firm Steptoe & Johnson in Phoenix and one of the state’s premier environmental lawyers.

For the past two years, he has also served (for $1 a year) as president of the League of Conservation Voters, a 22-year-old organization that keeps tabs on the environmental votes of members of Congress, and supports candidates with faithful green records.

In the 1992 campaign, he worked for no less than 17 Democratic candidates for the House and Senate, and traveled the country as a surrogate for Clinton and running mate Sen. Al Gore, often using his fluency in Spanish to spread their message in Latino neighborhoods.

During Clinton’s search for a Cabinet that would fulfill his promise to reflect the nation’s diversity, Richardson, a Latino, emerged as a possible alternative to Babbitt at Interior. Babbitt was considered versatile enough to fill the trade negotiator’s jobs.

But some of Gore’s strongest environmental supporters objected to Richardson--reportedly on grounds of personality rather than political views. And in the last days before Clinton’s choice, influential members of the environmental community made it clear to Clinton and his lieutenants that their choice was Babbitt.

Publicly, Babbitt would say only that he would serve wherever needed, but friends of the former governor said Thursday afternoon that he had gotten what he really wanted--Harold Ickes’ old job.