Clinton's Last-Minute Moves Could Hinder Bush
W A S H I N G T O N, Jan. 5 -- President Clinton rolled out a new ban on logging and road-building today, as he uses his final days in office to create a slew of rules and regulations that will be tough for incoming chief executive George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress to reverse.
The new regulations amount to the largest land conservation initiative in more than two decades, putting nearly a third of all national forest lands — some 58 million acres in 39 states — permanently off-limits from development.
“This is about preserving the land which the American people own,” Clinton said this afternoon, announcing the measure at the National Arboretum in Washington. “Today, we free the land so that they will remain unspoiled by bulldozers, undisturbed by chainsaws and untouched for our children.”
Environmentalists hailed the move. William Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society, called it “one of the nation’s greatest environmental achievements.”
“[T]his legacy of protection for our wild forests … should never and can never be rolled back,” he added.
But congressional Republicans say the sweeping restrictions block potentially profitable development by energy, timber and mining industries.
“We haven’t seen this much environmental and economic damage going out the door since Saddam Hussein torched the oil fields in Kuwait during the Gulf War,” Sen. Frank Murkowski of Alaska, the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said at a news conference on Capitol Hill this afternoon.
Bush to Review Clinton Actions
The new regulations today were the latest in a string of executive actions taken by Clinton in the closing weeks of his term — a record-long list that includes everything from imposing labeling standards for organic food to setting new confidentiality rules for medical records to restricting fishing off the Hawaii coral reefs.
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