Wilderness, Watt, the White House and little ol' me

by Frank DuBois

The column by Steve Wilmeth on the expansion of the wilderness concept reminded me of a scary event and a valuable lesson I learned from Jim Watt.

In my first year as an Interior Department appointee during the Reagan administration, I discovered three Interior Board of Land Appeals decisions which affected the rest of my career as a public official.

FLPMA became the law in 1976 and BLM was undergoing the process of identifying and recommending lands for Wilderness as mandated by Sec. 603 of that Act.

I had been there less than a year when I came across three recent IBLA decisions that said BLM was violating the law in three different circumstances.  The BLM had placed in Wilderness Study Area status lands that were less than 5,000 acres, or lands that didn't contain the mandatory wilderness characteristics on their own, or lands where the mineral estate was in private hands and therefor the surface couldn't be managed as wilderness.

These IBLA decisions were based upon a few appeals, and BLM was just going to quietly drop those areas that had been appealed, leaving all the rest in WSA status.  I argued BLM had violated the law in all of those designations and they should all be dropped.  I won that policy debate and went around with my chest puffed out thinking what a smart fellow I was.

BLM packaged up a Federal Register notice dropping the majority of the areas which amounted to just under one million acres.

Then all hell broke loose.  The Washington Post and New York Times had headlines like "Interior Secretary Watt drops a million acres out of Wilderness" and it was the lead story on CBS evening news.

Watt was summoned to the White House to discuss the issue and immediately upon his return demanded to see Ass't Secretary Garrey Carruthers, BLM Director Bob Burford and myself in his office to meet with him and his assistant Steve Shipley.

Watt was not happy and demanded to know just exactly what we had done.  There was tension in the air when I started my explanation of the language in Sec. 603 of FLPMA.  Carruthers spoke up to assist me but pronounced the law as FLMPA ("flempa") instead of FLPMA ("flipma").  Unfortunately, I got tickled over Carruthers mispronouncing FLPMA and couldn’t help but giggle during the rest of my explanation of Section 603 and the IBLA decisions.

Watt then looked me right in the eye and said we had made the right policy decision and it was good for America.  He then said I had failed to follow through in implementing the policy in a smart way politically.  I told him there were more areas to be dropped and he said I better figure out a way to drop the additional areas without him being called to the White House.

The meeting was over and I went back to my office.  I sat there thinking “Well you’ve finally done it.  The Secretary gets called to the White House over a policy you pushed through and then all you can do is laugh about it in front of the Secretary.”  I figured I might as well start packing my bags.

The phone rang and it was Steve Shipley.  I thought this was it.  To my surprise he said, “You made the Secretary’s day.  He was laughing as he walked out the door.”

Whew!

I got to work on dropping the rest of the areas.  I knew the media coverage would be better if it went from west to east instead of originating in the east.  From then on we had the BLM State Directors make the announcements, state by state and at different times.  As a result it didn’t make a blip on the national scene.

This was one of the valuable lessons I learned from Jim Watt.  Just making the right decision isn't enough.  The way that decision is implemented is just as important as the decision itself.