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For Immediate Release
Statement on Designation of Gale Norton as Secretary of the Interior
Statement of Rodger Schlickeisen, President, Defenders of Wildlife
Washington, D.C. – Based upon President-elect Bush's indication that he will nominate Gale Norton to be Secretary of the Interior, Defenders of Wildlife, and indeed, environmentalists and conservationists across the country, will hope for the best but prepare for the worst with regard to stewardship of the nation's public lands and wildlife. We will hope for the best because the president-elect has said many, many times that he intends to heal the divisions in the nation and advance a moderate agenda that the vast majority of Americans can support. But we will prepare for the worst because Gale Norton's record indicates that she has not been a moderate on environmental and conservation issues, but rather a right-wing extremist in the mold of her one-time mentor, James Watt.
We recognize that an individual's past record is not necessarily a reliable guide to how that person would function in a new president’s cabinet. But we encourage the U. S. Senate to examine her past positions with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, the Interior and Agriculture Departments, and as Colorado Attorney General, and her past speeches on federal environmental laws, very carefully before deciding how well she can serve the American public as Secretary. It will be interesting to see how she will answer the question of whether she is prepared to fully and faithfully execute the fundamental federal stewardship laws for which the Interior Secretary is responsible. It will be interesting because her past suggests Ms. Norton fundamentally disagrees with many of those laws.
It is also not encouraging that in her first appearance as the Interior Secretary designee, Ms. Norton chose to emphasize her desire to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In this regard, she is being faithful to President-elect Bush's own statements, which - as with the naming of Ms. Norton - seem to contradict his pledge to govern from the middle. He has stated many times that he favors drilling, in spite of the fact that the majority of the American public has demonstrated repeatedly over the years that it is opposed to such action. The Fish and Wildlife Service, which as Interior Secretary Ms. Norton would oversee, has also long opposed drilling because of the risks it would pose to the refuge’s magnificent wildlife and environmental values.
President-elect Bush has the opportunity to once again make conservation and environmental protection the strong bi-partisan issue it once was. Clearly that is what the American public wants. Numerous voices have been raised within the Republican party calling for the same thing. But it is hard to see how the new president can restore such bi-partisanship by appointing as Interior Secretary someone who has had a founding and prominent leadership role in the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates. This organization, founded in 1998, has been widely denounced by Republican environmentalists and others as an environmental fraud. For example, the well-respected Republicans for Environmental Protection said that "Unfortunately, CREA shows no signs of being either grassroots or pro-environment. The word greenscam comes first to mind."
We will hope for the best, and we would be delighted to find that in spite of her background, Ms. Norton is in fact a real conservationist who shares the public's views on the importance of environmental protection. But based upon her credentials, it is difficult not to conclude that her selection reflects not a desire by president-elect Bush to govern as a moderate on environmental issues, but rather his intention to find common ground with the anti-environmental, far right wing of his party. This is the same dynamic that led to the appointment of James Watt as Secretary of the Interior, and he was forced to resign because of his extremist beliefs and leadership.
