Editorial One of the biggest challenges the
Washington press corps faces with its centric view of the universe is how to
cover stories in rural America.
This inability to see beyond its own little world is why Big Media missed the
story when Vice President Dick Cheney shot his hunting partner while hunting
quail at a Texas ranch. Most members of the Washington press corps wouldn't be
caught dead in a Podunk town like Corpus Christi, which is why they got
scooped by the little Caller-Times newspaper.
This same failure to connect with rural America is why the New York Times et
al failed to understand why George W. Bush carried so much of America's
heartland in 2000.
When Bill Clinton won the presidency eight years earlier it was largely on the
strength of his mantra, "It's the economy, stupid." Bush might just
as well have adopted the mantra, "It's the environment, stupid."
The environment is cocktail party fare in places like New York, Boston and
Washington, D.C. But in places like Libby, Montana, Klamath Falls, Oregon and
Nye County, Nevada, where people's livelihoods depend on living off the land,
the environment is a life or death matter. In these places, and hundreds of
other communities just like them, Bush's promise to balance the needs of
nature with the needs of people was well received in places that had suffered
years of economic hardship in the name of snail darters, short nosed suckers
and spotted owls. People from New Mexico to the Canadian border were tired of
being told by bureaucrats and environmental activists that under the
provisions of the Endangered Species Act they would no longer be allowed to
graze their livestock, water their crops, turn a shovel or saw a tree because
some obscure plant, insect, fish bird or animal might somehow be impacted. It
didn't matter whether it meant they could not feed their families, schools
would have to close or whether recovery plans were based on weird science.
Bush's promise to reform the ESA and put people back into the equation by
focusing on recovery plans and recognizing private property rights resonated
in the rural districts.
Now that ESA reform is moving through Congress, environmental groups are up in
arms. They are using the same "sky is falling" rhetoric as in the
past, and appealing to urban legislators like Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and
Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) who have large green constituencies and no real stake
in looking out for rural economies.
It's hard to argue with the original intent of this monumental federal
legislation, but as more than 30 years of experience has shown, there is room
for improvement. To start with, the law should encourage solutions to species
protection that are more collaborative and less punitive.
If rural legislators are ever going to get the environmental reforms their
constituents so desperately want and need, the time to act is now.
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