Issue Position: Natural Resources

Issue Position

Up until a generation ago, federal resources policy could be summed up in a single word: abundance. In 1905, we instituted the National Forest Service under the guidance of Gifford Pinchot, who summed up the agency's mission with this simple maxim: "The greatest good for the greatest number in the long run."

We recognized that America's vast natural resources gave us the tools for unparalleled prosperity, and that we should responsibly manage these resources on a sustainable basis for the continuing prosperity of the American people.

We embarked upon an era of hydroelectric dam construction that produced abundant supplies of clean and inexpensive water and hydroelectricity and critically important flood control and made a major contribution to protecting our environment.

We practiced sound forest management, opening up our vast timber resources to sustainable, responsible harvesting, providing healthy, fire-resistant, disease resistant forests and a thriving economy in regions like this.

We recognized the importance of America's vast energy resources, and that responsible development of those resources could fuel the prosperity of the nation while protecting the lands for future generations.

We recognized the important role that public access to the public lands plays in promoting tourism and recreation and welcomed the public to the public's land.

But some time in the 1970's, a radical and retrograde ideology began seeping into our public resources policy. It reasoned that any public use of the land is incompatible with nature. The principle object of federal resources policy shifted from sustainable abundance to benign neglect. It springs from a bizarre notion that government must restore mother earth to her pristine, prehistoric condition, even if it means restoring the human population to its pristine, prehistoric condition. The result has been devastating to both the economy and the environment.

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