Clinton’s Green Finale

President Clinton, not always the environmental movement’s best friend, is winding up his presidency with a flurry of green works. In recent months he has halted road building on millions of acres of national forests, created new national monuments with the stroke of a pen and proposed a permanent multibillion-dollar fund to develop more parks and recreation areas and to restore the nation’s coastlines. It may be a stretch to compare his legacy with Teddy Roosevelt’s, but Clinton is acting boldly at a critical time.

As population and development growth threaten the nation’s last best natural areas, the pendulum may be swinging decisively from commercial exploitation of the federal estate to its preservation and enjoyment by the American people. This juncture would have come long ago but for a recalcitrant minority in Congress that has stood with the exploiters and enjoyed the largess of their campaign contributions.

Clinton’s record is complemented by last Thursday’s House passage, by a resounding vote of 315 to 102, of the proposed Conservation and Reinvestment Act, the landmark environmental legislation of recent years. The measure dedicates $2.8 billion a year from offshore oil and gas receipts to the purchase of open space, wetlands, historic sites, wildlife areas and other natural features. The measure incorporates Clinton’s “lands legacy” proposal and carries out--at last--Congress’ 1964 promise to dedicate offshore oil fees to the environment. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it deserves quick approval.

Also last week, the administration moved to protect 43 million acres of roadless national forest from any road construction. The plan, which would be made final in the fall, would halt or severely limit logging and other resource extraction in the roadless areas, many of which are worthy of wilderness designation.

In a more subtle but even more significant action, Clinton and U.S. Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck have dramatically altered the role of Dombeck’s agency, once largely a silent, supportive partner of commercial users of the public lands. The emphasis finally has shifted to hunting, fishing, backpacking, boating and other people needs.

This campaign has not come without criticism. Private land interests and their allies in Congress resort to the tired old claim that Clinton is trying to “lock up” federal lands and is sacrificing jobs. In fact, there will be more public access and increased tourist and recreation business. And logging, mining and grazing will continue on other millions of acres of national forest. This action merely brings the situation into better balance.

On the environmentalist side, some groups say Clinton has not gone far enough. They want him to prohibit all logging in all the national forests, for example. The road ban could be improved, but by any measure a roadless 43 million acres is an extraordinarily beneficial step.

Naturally, Clinton did not do all of this himself. Many of the ideas already were before Congress, though they were going nowhere. And even Teddy Roosevelt had pioneer conservationist Gifford Pinchot to prod him to create five new national parks, including Grand Canyon, and establish 99 million acres of forest preserve. Clinton’s Pinchot is Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, who has traveled the West tirelessly the past five years identifying areas that needed saving and building support for the program. It’s his legacy too.

This administration has established a strong new conservation ethic for the country when perhaps it needs it most. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in 1854: “We need the tonic of wildness. . . . We can never have enough of nature.”