Little Room for Nature on Public Lands
While President Bush tours the nation promoting alternative energy, his administration’s lust for oil and natural gas continues to encourage despoiling public land.
Since Bush entered the White House, the Interior Department has directed the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees land and subsurface mineral resources on more than half a billion acres, to clear the way for drilling at the expense of environmental oversight.
The Washington Post Wednesday reported that increased drilling has forced the BLM to shift biologists from wildlife conservation programs to handling paperwork.
The report echoed a Government Accountability Office study released last year, finding that from 1999 to 2004, the number of drilling permits approved by the BLM more than tripled, from 1,803 to 6,399. Yet Congress has not provided the money to pay for proper oversight, let alone affected environmental programs.
“A dramatic increase in oil and gas development on federal lands over the past six years has lessened BLM’s ability to meet its environmental protection responsibilities,” the GAO concluded.
The oil and gas industry cannot even drill fast enough to keep up. Of the 13,070 BLM permits issued in the last two years, The Post reported, only 5,844 have broken ground. Were the BLM to stop handing out permits today, drilling could continue apace for years.
The view that land is held in the public trust both to provide an escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life and to preserve it in its natural state for future generations has fallen out of fashion. For the Bush administration, public land has value only as a resource to hand over to industry.
Americans are not even getting a good payoff. The president’s proposed budget would exempt oil companies from more than $7 billion dollars in royalties over the next five years.
Oil and gas join the likes of mining, cattle grazing and logging on the list of industries that may exploit public land for private profits, all at bargain-basement prices.