Heinrich Maneuver
President Trump has signed into law S. 47, the “John D.
Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act”, now Public Law No:
116-9. Tucked within this massive, 640-page, 105,634-word bill, you will find Section
1201 containing 3, 338 words that designate 10 Wilderness areas in Dona Ana County, NM and in Section 1202 there
are 820 words designating 2 Wilderness areas in northern NM.
Both of these sections were a result of legislation
introduced by members of the NM Congressional Delegation. Were any of these
legislative initiatives as stand-alone bills passed by the House of
Representatives? No. Were they subject to debate on the Senate floor and passed
by the Senate? No. Instead, they were rolled into this huge federal lands
package.
If these are such wonderful bills that benefit the public,
why are they unable to pass them as stand-alone bills? If they have such broad
public support, why are they afraid to subject them to the scrutiny and debate
of the regular, traditional legislative process?
What we are witnessing is a particular legislative tactic by
Senator Heinrich. He introduces a bill, gets a committee hearing held and
sometimes gets the committee to pass the bill. But rather than taking the bill
to the Senate floor, he holds back and does nothing until an Omnibus bill of
some type comes along, and then attaches his legislation to the larger packet
of bills.
Remember the Columbine-Hondo Wilderness legislation?
Remember the bill to transfer the Valles Caldera from a public trust to the
Park Service? Those were attached to the National Defense Authorization Act in
2014, just like these Wilderness bills were attached to this federal lands
package.
Let’s call it the Heinrich maneuver, and I’m confident he
will choke us with it again in the future.
What I have raised questions about is process. The most
important thing, though, is how this will affect people on the ground.
Wes Eaton, one of the younger ranchers affected by these
wilderness designations puts it this way:
“It is a shame how our senators continue to stack multiple
designations on these lands, we now have a Wilderness on top of a Monument, on
top of an ACEC, on top of a WSA, on top of Multiple Use. They claim they are opening up access to the
public, if that was the case they would have left it as Multiple Use lands
only.”
According to Eaton, the only things these designations
accomplish, is to“… limit and restrict. Limit and restrict public recreation,
the hunter’s access, the outdoorsman’s ability to go out and enjoy these lands.”
For ranchers like himself, Eaton says, “a wilderness
designation will all but end the ability to maintain water wells for wildlife
and cattle, maintain fences for grazing rest, and provide much needed brush
control for the dominating invasive species that have taken away the grass
lands this once was.”
Dudley Williams, who ranches south of Las Cruces, explains
he now has four Wilderness areas on his place: Potrillo Mountain Wilderness of
105,000 acres, Aden Lava Flow Wilderness, of 27,000 acres, plus Cinder Cone
Wilderness, of 17,000 acres and the Whitethorn Wilderness, of 9,600 acres, with
the Potrillo just five miles from the Mexican border. “The last two were never approved as WSA's”,
says Williams, “but were snuck in as 2 of the first sneaky land grab actions of
the Wilderness Alliance.”
Williams continued, “we are going to lose nearly all access
to fence repairs and dirt tank maintenance and most likely have roads closed to
some of our other watering improvements. The bill says cattle grazing will
continue as before. How is that possible if our improvements deteriorate or
disappear”?
“We cannot trust our politicians who are driven by special
interest groups that preach untruths and twisted truths to get what they want”,
says Williams. “In this case, the elimination of public land grazing. Not by
stating it as such but by making it impossible to continue with all the road
closures and restrictions.”
It’s not just process, it is people too, and many are being
hurt by this radical, progressive, environmental agenda.
Should trees have
standing?
In a 1972 Supreme Court case, the court ruled the Sierra
Club did not have standing to sue the Forest Service over a particular Disney
project, because the club itself did not receive injury over the Forest
Service’s decision. In his dissent, Justice William O. Douglas raised the issue
of nature having the right to sue. Douglas pointed out that, "A teaspoon of living earth contains 5 million bacteria,
20 million fungi, one million protozoa, and 200,000 algae. No living human can
predict what vital miracles may be locked in this dab of life, this stupendous
reservoir of genetic materials that have evolved continuously since the dawn of
the earth.” Douglas went on to write, “Contemporary
public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to
the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own
preservation.”
Believe it or not, this has actually
been happening. In 2014 New Zealand gave legal rights to a forest, in 2017
Columbia granted rights to a river and India
recognized two rivers as legal persons. Last year the Amazon rainforest received
it’s own rights. Most recently, the citizens of Toledo passed a Lake Erie Bill
of Rights, which recognizes the lake as a person with all the rights that
pertain thereto. Sigal Samuel writes, “…this was the first rights-based
legislation aimed at protecting a whole US ecosystem: the lake, its
tributaries, and the many species that live off it.”
While our own rights are being diminished, those for animals
and objects of nature are being expanded.
Dancing with wolves
An Oregon rancher,
Ted Birdseye, has lost five cows, a calf and a dog to wolves. To protect his
remaining animals, Birdseye has employed a lime-green inflatable dancer, such
as those seen in used-car lots. The inflatable dancer, along with a generator,
were donated by the Defenders of Wildlife. The early results have been
promising, although the rancher isn’t sure how effective it will be over the
long term. Birdseye had previously tried electric fences, lights, flags,
noisemakers and guard dogs in attempts to protect his livestock.
This victimized
rancher is put in this position by those inflatable politicians who dance to
the tune of the environmentalists.
Till next time, be a
nuisance to the devil and don’t forget to check that cinch.
Frank
DuBois was the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003, is the author of
a blog: The Westerner (www.thewesterner.blogspot.com)
and is the founder of The DuBois Rodeo Scholarship and The DuBois Western
Heritage Foundation
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