SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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56–427 l
1999
AMERICAN LAND SOVEREIGNTY PROTECTION ACT
HEARINGS
before the
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
on
H.R. 883
TO PRESERVE THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE UNITED STATES OVER PUBLIC LANDS AND ACQUIRED LANDS OWNED BY THE UNITED STATES, AND TO PRESERVE STATE SOVEREIGNTY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS IN NON-FEDERAL LANDS SURROUNDING THOSE PUBLIC LANDS AND ACQUIRED LANDS. ''AMERICAN LAND SOVEREIGNTY PROTECTION ACT''
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
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MARCH 18, 1999, WASHINGTON, DC AND MAY 1, 1999, ROLLA, MISSOURI
Serial No. 106–16
Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house
or
Committee address: http://www.house.gov/resources
AMERICAN LAND SOVEREIGNTY PROTECTION ACT
HEARINGS
before the
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
on
H.R. 883
TO PRESERVE THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE UNITED STATES OVER PUBLIC LANDS AND ACQUIRED LANDS OWNED BY THE UNITED STATES, AND TO PRESERVE STATE SOVEREIGNTY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS IN NON-FEDERAL LANDS SURROUNDING THOSE PUBLIC LANDS AND ACQUIRED LANDS. ''AMERICAN LAND SOVEREIGNTY PROTECTION ACT''
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ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
MARCH 18, 1999, WASHINGTON, DC AND MAY 1, 1999, ROLLA, MISSOURI
Serial No. 106–16
Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources
AMERICAN LAND SOVEREIGNTY PROTECTION ACT
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
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KEN CALVERT, California
RICHARD W. POMBO, California
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming
HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho
GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Carolina
WILLIAM M. (MAC) THORNBERRY, Texas
CHRIS CANNON, Utah
KEVIN BRADY, Texas
JOHN PETERSON, Pennsylvania
RICK HILL, Montana
BOB SCHAFFER, Colorado
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana
GREG WALDEN, Oregon
DON SHERWOOD, Pennsylvania
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
MIKE SIMPSON, Idaho
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado
GEORGE MILLER, California
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia
BRUCE F. VENTO, Minnesota
DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
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ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
OWEN B. PICKETT, Virginia
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
CALVIN M. DOOLEY, California
CARLOS A. ROMERO-BARCELÓ, Puerto Rico
ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
ADAM SMITH, Washington
WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
CHRIS JOHN, Louisiana
DONNA CHRISTIAN-CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands
RON KIND, Wisconsin
JAY INSLEE, Washington
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California
TOM UDALL, New Mexico
MARK UDALL, Colorado
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
LLOYD A. JONES, Chief of Staff
ELIZABETH MEGGINSON, Chief Counsel
CHRISTINE KENNEDY, Chief Clerk/Administrator
JOHN LAWRENCE, Democratic Staff Director
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C O N T E N T S
Hearing held March 18, 1999
Statement of Witnesses:
Kimble, Melinda L., Acting Assistant Secretary for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC
Prepared statement of
Kirkpatrick, Hon. Jeane J., American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC
Prepared statement of
Additional material submitted by
Lindsey, Stephen G., Elgin, Arizona
Prepared statement of
MacLeod, Laurel, Director of Legislation and Public Policy, Concerned Women for America, Washington, DC
Prepared statement of
Rabkin, Jeremy A., Associate Professor, Department of Government, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Prepared statement of
Additional material submitted by
Letters from Ms. Raidl, Mr. Arnett, Mr. Carruthers, Mr. Milne, Mr. Clarke, and Mr. Leshy
Train, Russell E., World Wildlife Fund, Washington, DC, additional material submitted by
von Droste, Bernd, Director, World Heritage Center, additional material submitted by
Rovig, David B., President, Greystar Resources Ltd., Billings, Montana
Prepared statement of
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Smith, Ann Webster, Chairman Emeritus, U.S. Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, Washington, DC
Prepared statement of
Yeager, Brooks B., Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, DC
Prepared statement of
Additional material supplied:
Biodiversity Treaty, People for the USA
Briefing Paper, The American Land Sovereignty Protection Act
Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Message from The President of the United States
Frampton, Hon. George T., Jr., United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, additional material submitted by
Hearing held May 1, 1999
Statement of Members:
Chenoweth, Hon. Helen, a Representative in Congress from the State of Idaho
Prepared statement of
Emerson, Hon. Joann, additional material submitted by
Statement of Witnesses:
Alford, Scott
Barnes, Carl, Missouri Forest Products Association and People for the USA, Potosi, Missouri
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Prepared statement of
Benton, Wanda, Salem, Missouri
Prepared statement of
Bright, David
Burks, Connie, Jasper, Arkansas
Prepared statement of
Additional material submitted by
Cooke, Joe
Prepared statement of
Denham, Mary, Director and State Coordinator, Take Back Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas
Prepared statement of
Additional material submitted by
Floyd, Frank
Hardecke, Ron, Citizens for Private Property Rights, Owensville, Missouri
Prepared statement of
Hicks, Ray
Jud, Bill
Kreisler, Leon, Missouri Farm Bureau, Salem, Missouri
Prepared statement of
Lovett, Dale, Pulp and Paperworkers' Resource Council, Wickliffe, Kentucky
Prepared statement of
Meyers, Frank, Forester and Secretary, Potosi Chapter, People for the USA
Prepared statement of
Powell, John, Frank B. Powell Lumber Company, Rolla, Missouri
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Prepared statement of
Skiles, Darrell, Missouri Cattlemen's Association, Salem, Missouri
Prepared statement of
Simpson, Bobby, Dent County Commissioner, Salem, Missouri
Prepared statement of
Yancey, Richard J., President, Viburnum Chapter, People for the USA, Black, Missouri
Prepared statement of
Welch, Marge
Williams, Junior
Additional material supplied:
Sierra Club, Letter dated April 27,
Text of H.R. 883
HEARING ON H.R. 883, TO PRESERVE THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE UNITED STATES OVER PUBLIC LANDS AND ACQUIRED LANDS OWNED BY THE UNITED STATES, AND TO PRESERVE STATE SOVEREIGNTY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS IN NON-FEDERAL LANDS SURROUNDING THOSE PUBLIC LANDS AND ACQUIRED LANDS. ''AMERICAN LAND SOVEREIGNTY PROTECTION ACT''
THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 1999
House of Representatives,
Committee on Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:02 p.m., in room 1324, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Helen Chenoweth [acting chairman of the Committee] presiding.
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Mrs. CHENOWETH. The Committee will please come to order.
I want to welcome our witnesses, this very distinguished panel. We have two panels of very distinguished witnesses and we are all looking forward to hearing from these witnesses.
Today we hear testimony on H.R. 883, which gives the Congress a role in approving international land designations, primarily United Nations' World Heritage Sites and Biosphere Reserves. H.R. 883 now has more than 145 cosponsors.
So that everyone understands, my concern is that the United States Congress, and therefore the people of the United States, have been left out of the domestic process to designate Biosphere Reserves and World Heritage Sites. H.R. 883 makes the Congress and the people of this country relevant in this process.
The Biosphere Reserve program is not even authorized by a single U.S. law or even an international treaty, and that is wrong. Executive branch appointees cannot, and should not, do things that the law does not authorize. In fact, both Biosphere Reserves and World Heritage Sites programs are administered through the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, commonly referred to as UNESCO. However, the United States withdrew from UNESCO in 1984 because the Reagan Administration found it riddled with gross financial mismanagement. Fifteen years later, even the Clinton Administration has not rejoined UNESCO. As a result, it defies the imagination as to why our government is still participating in these UNESCO programs.
We, as the Congress, have a responsibility to ensure that the representatives of the people are engaged on these important international land designations. Now I do not think that Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution advises that in governing our lands that we simply opt out of policies that may appear ineffectual. But instead, it expressly requires that we, the Congress, make all needful rules and regulations regarding land, as if to suggest that we are to jealously guard against the slightest possibility that foreign entities have any power over what belongs under the strict purview of the United States of America.
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Yet, these international land designations have been created with virtually no congressional oversight, no hearings, and no congressional authority. The public and the local governments are rarely consulted. Until now, no one has lifted an eyebrow to examine how the U.S. domestic implementation of these programs has eaten away at the power and the sovereignty of the Congress to exercise its Constitutional power to make the laws that govern what goes on in the public lands.
Today, we will begin to look at these very issues. We intend to move this legislation from the Committee to the House floor for a vote very soon.
With that, it is time to begin. I once again want to welcome all of our witnesses who will testify today. I would like to introduce our first panel. First, we have the Honorable Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Ambassador to the United Nations, she's now with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC; joining her is Ms. Melinda Kimble, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, located here in Washington; Mr. Brooks Yeager, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington; and Dr. Jeremy Rabkin, Associate Professor, Department of Government, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Mr. VENTO. Madam Chair, I have an opening statement.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Vento, I apologize. We would like to hear from the Minority.
Mr. VENTO. Mr. Chairman, this is not new legislation. The Congress first considered it in 1996 and 1997. In both instances the other body, the Senate refused to consider the measure on the floor and the Administration indicated it would veto the measure if passed.
This measure is misguided because it aims at the symbols of Federal policy when what the supporters are legislatively really opposing is the underlying policy itself. While some of my colleagues and I might like to see us doing even more, this country has set a national policy goal of the long-term preservation of environmental resources. The commitment this Nation has made to the preservation, conservation, restoration policies of land sometimes demand that certain activities which threaten these resources be prohibited and/or tightly limited. The reality of the situation is that no U.N. commando team will penetrate U.S. borders to seize control of our most precious parks, all in the name of conservation. Besides, many are promising today that we will soon have a crack missile defense system to thwart any and all attempts to seize the sovereignty of our great Nation out from under our control.
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Any and all land use restrictions in place are a function of U.S. law, not an international treaty or protocol. Our participation in the World Heritage Convention, the RAMSAR Convention, the Man and the Biosphere Program, as an example, are emblematic of an underlying policy and a symbolic value and importance the U.S. places on its natural resources, our natural legacy. These international cooperative agreements are an extension of our own domestic policy. They do not dictate it; they flow from such policy and law. These sites we have nominated under the World Heritage Convention are listed because Congress chose to enact policy and law to protect them and establish special land managers to regulate and enforce such law.
To address a specific example that gave rise to this bill, the problem with the New World Mine was that it was, in fact, too close to Yellowstone National Park, not that it was too close to a World Heritage Site. If we want to debate the basic principles in environmental protection, that's fine. But we should not waste our time passing legislation that seeks to abolish the programs that grew out of these basic tenets.
We have evolved over 200 years an American land-use ethic in case law. This is particularly true because the decision to abandon these programs has consequences. And let's be clear, the goal of this measure is to abandon these programs, not simply to regulate them. To require Congress to act for each and every parcel of land to be considered is to effectively stop all future nominations and designations.
The legislation sends a signal around the world that our Nation, the United States of America, which forged the policy path to institute these various treaties and protocols, is undercutting the values and benefits of international recognition for important cultural or environmental sites. It sends a signal that the United States is undercutting and abandoning values for ecosystem research coordinated through the U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program.
At the same time, when the United States is thrust into a role of dominant power and in the central role as a world leader in so many areas, why would we voluntarily abdicate perhaps the most important leadership position we occupy, that of a leader in an effort to make this life on this planet sustainable? This would convey to the hundreds, in fact, a hundred and sixty-some nations who are members of the World Heritage Convention Program, it would convey to these nations who are participants of the conservation treaties and protocols that special interest, domestic political and parochial considerations come first in the United States. If the United States cannot even permit recognition to be accorded, why should the other nations bother to participate?
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Finally, it is particularly troubling that we are pursuing this misdirected and misguided policy based on gross misinformation. Each agreement covered by this bill states on its face that it contains no provision that affects in any way the authority or ability of participating nations to control the lands within its borders. These programs give the U.N. no more control over land of this country than the awarding of Gold Medals gives the U.S. Olympic Committee control over an American athlete. To claim that these international programs somehow infringe on the sovereignty of this Nation is simply factually inaccurate.
This is not all that is inconsistent about H.R. 883. While this legislation is similar to the measure introduced last Congress, it differs from the version that passed the House in one important respect. During floor debate, 242 of our Members of Congress supported an amendment that I offered which would require specific congressional authorization for any international agreement seeking to make U.S. land available for commercial use as well. A majority of our colleagues felt that if you're going to reassert our role in governing the use of these lands for conservation purposes, we should be consistent and reassert congressional oversight of international agreements which cover commercial exploit of uses of U.S. lands as well.
How can we stand by and let important conservation programs be thrown by the wayside for superfluous reasons and then permit foreign companies to haul away precious and valuable resources rightfully owned by the American taxpayers who receive practically nothing in return? The House clearly asserted that sentiment last Congress and most certainly would hopefully do the same in this Congress.
Mr. Chairman, programs like this are good programs. They do not flow from the U.N. The argument is pervasive only to those who have creative and overactive imaginations. Rather, these programs are being targeted because they do play a role in highlighting instances where we, as Congress and as a Nation, fall short in meeting the very goals and values that the U.S. espouses and that these international agreements represent.
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Madam Chairman, this is an issue of takings, not of private property but of stripping international recognition from the esteem and from the United States citizens of the world. The reaction to this symbolic program of conversation is ironic when, in fact, we look to the next century. The United States should be joining with the family of nations leading the advancement of knowledge and working to implement such know-how into a host of environmental agreements, some with teeth and enforcement mechanisms, because of the health, the welfare, and to benefit Spaceship Earth and the people.
Thank you.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Vento.
The Chair recognizes the real Chairman, Mr. Young. Do you have an opening statement, sir?
Mr. YOUNG. I beg to differ with the good Chairperson, she is the Chairman today. And I do thank you for participating in this; I have a series of hearings.
I am very pleased to see the panel is here and look forward to their testimony, and we look forward to the passage of this legislation again, as we did last year.
I thank you, Madam Chairman.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Under Rule 4(g), we like to limit time for our witnesses to five minutes. And also I do want to state that if any other members have any opening statements, under unanimous consent, they will be entered into the record.
Mr. VENTO. Madam Chair, a point of inquiry. I don't have the testimony from the distinguished former Ambassador, Ms. Kirkpatrick, nor the disclosure statement. Is there some reason for that? Doesn't the Rules of the House provide at least for the disclosure statement and the advanced copies of this testimony?
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Vento, the testimony came in a little bit late. But we would be happy to provide as soon as we can copies of the information.
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Mr. VENTO. Do I have it? I am not aware of it being in my portfolio and I am asking about it.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. It is noted for the record.
So without any other questions, we will proceed with our first witness. Mrs. Kirkpatrick, we look forward to hearing from you.
STATEMENT OF HON. JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Thank you very much, and I thank you for inviting me. I am pleased to be here to make some general remarks based principally on my experience in the United Nations and reading and reflection on it since.
What I would like to do is make some general comments concerning the practices, the patterns of the U.N. organization and some of their impacts on the operation of programs. Specifically, I would quote Paul Johnson, who has said that the 1970s could perhaps be termed as the ''Decade of collectivism,'' particularly for the United Nations, because there was a great explosion of collectivist initiatives in the 1970s, nowhere as much as the United Nations where a whole series of new orders and conventions were adopted and undertaken, including the 1972 Convention on the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, but also the 1974 new international economic order, and a half dozen other initiatives in the 1970s establishing global organizations in a U.N. framework to undertake some new activity which had never been undertaken before, not just by the United Nations but, in most cases, by anyone.
And the thrust of these conventions was regulatory, for the most part, and it was in most cases an effort to establish a louder voice on the part of larger numbers of countries in the establishment of policies in a very wide range of spheres. A characteristic of the new organizations was the practice of making decisions on the basis of what in the United Nations is considered the General Assembly Principle, which is the basis of one country, one vote. The governing body of most of these organizations is chosen ultimately in a U.N. arena which permits the decision-making on the basis of one country, one vote. The problem with the one country, one vote principle is, of course, that the United States' vote counts exactly as much as St. Christopher, Nevis, or Barbados, or Germany equally with Guinea, or Britain with the Bahamas, or whomever. When decisions are made on the basis of one country, one vote, there is very little account taken of interest in the decision or technological competence or capacity to, in fact, implement decisions made.
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The Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage provides such a pattern of decision-making. Those decisions are made by delegates to the World Heritage Committee and the Biosphere Program International Coordinating Council. They choose the International Coordinating Council which is chosen by a UNESCO assembly which itself operates on the basis of one country, one vote.
I might in parenthesis simply say that I was representing the United States in the United Nation and the U.S. representation in the U.N. during the period that the decision was made to withdraw U.S. participation in UNESCO. I would like to say just a word about this. It was a decision that was made not easily and not rapidly. It was proposed early in the Reagan Administration and a commitment was solicited from my cabinet colleagues by me, I might say, and received that they would not withhold U.S. support from UNESCO or membership in UNESCO until and unless we had made our very best effort at reform of the really egregious abuses which characterized the UNESCO governance system. And for more than two years, three years the Reagan Administration, in cooperation with all parts of the U.S. Government, made an effort to correct some of the fraud, waste, and mismanagement which virtually everyone who looked at the problem agreed existed.
Having failed, we decided reluctantly that it was really necessary to withhold U.S. participation and withdraw U.S. membership from UNESCO. And I would reiterate what the Chairman has pointed to; that is, no subsequent Administration has deemed it desirable to rejoin UNESCO. It is a poorly managed organization. Most of its decisions and most of its domains are made on the basis of one country, one vote and there is a very great deal of fraud and mismanagement. I think some improvement has been made but not dramatic. The World Heritage Sites and designations are no different than many other aspects of UNESCO; namely, they are not managed in a way that provides for systematic representation of countries involved.
I would just like to mention one more general point concerning U.N. operations. All U.N. decisions are made either on the basis of some special selection of countries because of interest or competence or on the basis of one country, one vote. The General Assembly is, of course, one country, one vote, and the Security Council provides for weighting of votes. The Convention Concerning Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage provides simply for decisions ultimately on the basis of one country, one vote, in which no special attention is paid or account taken of the investments, or the concerns, or the effects on Americans of any particular decision by the World Heritage Sites.
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I personally have been disturbed by the fact that there is no voice for elected officials, no voice for the American people in these processes. And I believe personally that the United States should not participate in U.N. activities, whether it be the Law of the Sea, or the Chemical Weapons Conventions, or World Cultural and Natural Heritage Programs, where decisions are made on the basis of one country, one vote, where our great involvement is not matched by some commensurate voice in decisions affecting our properties and our interests.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kirkpatrick may be found at the end of the hearing.]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you very much, Mrs. Kirkpatrick. I will have to say that I am sure that all of my colleagues up here and thousands of people wish that we could just sit down and talk to you by the hour and listen and learn from you. It is a great honor to have you here at the Committee.
And now the Chair recognizes Ms. Melinda Kimble for her testimony.
STATEMENT OF MELINDA L. KIMBLE, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR OCEANS AND INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL AND SCIENTIFIC AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. KIMBLE. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Madam Chairman and members of the Committee, I welcome this opportunity to comment on H.R. 883, and I respectfully request that the full text of my written statement be included in the record.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Without objection.
Ms. KIMBLE. H.R. 883 directly affects implementation of the World Heritage Convention, the U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program, and the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands. These conventions and initiatives have been long-standing components of the United States' international and environmental diplomacy.
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The United States agrees that the public and the Congress should participate in an open, transparent, and participatory nomination process for World Heritage Sites, Biosphere Reserves, and RAMSAR sites. The Administration believes, however, that this legislation goes too far in addressing concerns about the implementation of these long-standing international agreements and programs.
This bill would take what is currently a bottom-up grassroots approach and impose a cumbersome top-down approval process. The United States was the principal architect of the World Heritage Convention and the first country to ratify it. This convention respects the sovereignty of countries on whose territory World Heritage Sites are located. It makes clear that the responsibility for identifying and delineating such sites rests with the national governments that are party to the convention.
The Man and the Biosphere Program, or MAB, is a voluntary and cooperative science program which promotes the study of the interaction of Earth's human and natural systems. In Kentucky's biosphere reserve at Mammoth Cave National Park, local authorities work together to protect the area's water quality. In the Everglades biosphere reserve, policy-makers and scientists have produced strategies for restoring this vast ecosystem while preserving the area's social and economic structures.
Nominations for the U.S. biosphere reserves are prepared by locally established committees interested in pursuing the designation. They obtain letters of concurrence from local and State government representatives and landowner approval for all included properties.
H.R. 883 appears to be based on a belief that the World Heritage Convention and the U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program threaten U.S. sovereignty, mandate land-use regimes, and restrict the rights of private property owners. Rather, the main purpose of both is to recognize sites of exceptional ecological, scientific, or cultural importance. Neither regulates the management of these sites or affects the land-use rights of the country in which they may be located.
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We also have concerns about Section 5 of H.R. 883, which restricts international agreements generally with respect to the nomination or designation of Federal lands for conservation purposes. This section could hamper the ability of local communities to gain recognition of a specific wetland site in their area as a Wetland of International Importance under the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands. Such a listing affects neither the management regime for these areas nor resource use within them.
This convention exists because of a global concern over the loss of wetlands and the migratory birds that depend on these habitats. At the local level, RAMSAR designations promote greater public awareness of wetland values and the need to protect them. The network of RAMSAR sites in Canada, the United States, and Mexico provide safe breeding and wintering grounds for waterfowl. These birds, in turn, generate significant economic activity in the United States through hunting, tourism to these sites, and bird-watching.
We believe that U.S. participation in the World Heritage Convention, U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program, and the RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands serves important national interests and helps link national and international initiatives with local stakeholders. U.S. leadership and influence in these conventions and programs encourages other nations to similarly value and care for significant sites in their countries.
The Department of State opposes H.R. 883. If it were to pass, the Secretary of State would recommend a veto. Recognition of a U.S. site as a World Heritage Site, a Biosphere Reserve, or a RAMSAR site in no way undermines our sovereignty. Such recognition also does not impose additional Federal land-use restrictions over such areas or adjacent areas. We believe this legislation runs counter to the U.S. role in supporting both local and global environmental cooperation and could greatly impede the nomination of new sites under these conventions and programs.
This concludes my statement, Madam Chairman.
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[The prepared statement of Ms. Kimble may be found at the end of the hearing.]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Ms. Kimble.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Brooks Yeager for his testimony.
STATEMENT OF BROOKS B. YEAGER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. YEAGER. Thank you, Madam Chairman. If I may be allowed to summarize my statement and have the full statement included for the written record of the Committee.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Without objection.
Mr. YEAGER. Before I start, I would like to say on a personal note how genuinely glad I am to see Representatives Tom and Mark Udall in this room which Mark's father and Tom's uncle for so long was a wonderful chairman of this Committee. So, it is really a great pleasure.
Madam Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to present the views of the Department of the Interior on H.R. 883, the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act. The chief effect of this legislation in our view, Madam Chairman, would be to place cumbersome and unwise restrictions on U.S. participation in the World Heritage Convention and other international conservation agreements.
Ironically, these agreements in many cases were the product of U.S. world conservation leadership and have been supported by Presidents of both parties going back to President Nixon. Through them, the United States has been successful in engaging many other nations in the world effort to establish and protect national parks and to better conserve unique and important natural and cultural resources.
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The restrictions on participation and the burdensome requirements of H.R. 883 appear to be a response to worries that these agreements in some way diminish U.S. sovereignty over our own parks and refuges and public lands. But in our view, nothing could be further from the truth. Because the restrictions of H.R. 883 are unnecessary, and would unwisely weaken the worldwide conservation leadership and influence that the United States has earned, we must strongly oppose the bill. If this legislation were to pass, the Secretary of the Interior would join the Secretary of State in recommending a veto.
Madam Chairman, with your permission, I would like to introduce some documents for the Committee record. The documents show the long, 30 year history of enthusiastic and nonpartisan support for these agreements, particularly for the World Heritage Convention. They also show an equally long bipartisan consensus that U.S. involvement in World Heritage and other such international conservation conventions poses no threat to U.S. sovereignty.
In particular, I would like to start, Madam Chairman, with the message from the President of the United States on November 23, 1972, introducing the World Heritage Conservation Convention to Congress, in which President Nixon said ''The Convention places basic reliance on the resources and efforts of the States within whose territory these natural and cultural sites are located, but, at the same time, would provide a means of assisting States which have insufficient resources or expertise in the protection of areas for the benefit of all mankind.''
In particular, in the letter of submittal from the Secretary of State at the time, it notes that the U.S. actually moved to strengthen drafts of the convention during the negotiations during the early 1970s to have a convention that would match the U.S. desire at the time for world conservation to move forward with U.S. leadership and influence.
The second document I would like to introduce for the record, Madam Chairman, is a letter from Secretary of Interior William Clark, dated April 1984, to Secretary of State George Schultz, and this addresses the point that was raised by Ambassador Kirkpatrick about our disassociation at the time from UNESCO. In fact, we did disassociate from UNESCO and I have no basis to second-guess Ambassador Kirkpatrick's judgment as to why that was and believe that's the case. But at the same time, it was the considered policy of the Reagan Administration at the time to retain our affiliation with the World Heritage Convention.
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In fact, this letter speaks exactly to that point. It says the Convention is identified as a clear U.S. initiative, the concept having first been raised in President Nixon's 1971 environmental message. ''This country's close identification with the program was emphasized by our having deposited the first instrument of ratification and by six years of Executive leadership through U.S. membership on and chairmanship of the World Heritage Committee.'' The rest of the letter goes on to explain why, despite the fact that we had disassociated from UNESCO, we should stay in the World Heritage Convention.
The third letter that I would like to introduce is also from the Reagan Administration. It is a letter from Ray Arnet when he was director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, in which Mr. Arnet explains why it is important in the context of the World Heritage Convention for the World Heritage Committee to have some responsibilities to oversee the integrity of World Heritage Sites. It explains clearly that it is U.S. policy that once a site is nominated that there should be an effort to try to retain the values for which the site was nominated.
I have a press release from Secretary Hodel when he was Secretary, also during the Reagan Administration, indicating how proud the department was at the time that the Statue of Liberty could be recognized as a World Heritage Site so that that would be the official recognition that ''she is the most widely recognized symbol of freedom and hope around the world.''
Mr. VENTO. I ask that these letters be made part of the record, Madam Chairman.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Without objection, so ordered. But he is not through yet.
Mr. YEAGER. Right. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I have two other documents, one from the Governor of New Mexico Gary Carruthers explaining why he is very happy that the Taos Pueblo was nominated for a World Heritage Site, and one from our Solicitor John Leshy explaining why, in very clear terms, he believes that there is absolutely no infringement on U.S. sovereignty in the course of the designation or administration of World Heritage Sites in the United States.
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I guess reading those documents took me a little more time than I thought it would. My time is almost up. I would just like to say, Madam Chairman, I think there has been a very long history of nonpartisan support for these conventions. And as Melinda Kimble made clear, the U.S. through these conventions has, in effect, marketed the idea of the national park and of the better preservation of cultural and natural heritage throughout the world. I know that when the Secretary of Interior and I were in South Africa together, just two months ago, people in Cape Town were enormously overjoyed at the thought that they might be able to have the Cape National Park be brought into the World Heritage system, because for them it was an indication of the pride that they have in their local heritage and the fact that their local heritage really is of a unique stature that deserves world recognition.
That is what these designations are about. That is what these agreements are about. I think it would be unfortunate to hobble them with unnecessary requirements. In fact, Congress has had an important role; it ratified the agreement for World Heritage, it enacted the legislation that told us how to administer the World Heritage program, and we follow that legislation very carefully. We do consult Congress when we nominate sites. I think there may be room for improvement in those areas, but we don't think there is any need to bog down the programs and to vitiate their purpose for the United States. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Yeager and accompanying documents may be found at the end of the hearing.]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Yeager. There was a total of eight documents that you presented, wasn't there?
Mr. YEAGER. I'm sorry, I'll count them, Madam Chairman. Seven but one of them is a letter in response. I have the whole packet here for you.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Okay. Thank you very much. They will be entered into the record, without objection.
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And now the Chair recognizes Dr. Jeremy Rabkin for his testimony.
STATEMENT OF JEREMY A. RABKIN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, NEW YORK
Dr. RABKIN. Thank you. I just want to begin by replying to some things that have already been said. Congressman Vento started off by saying that this bill that we're talking about today is just symbolic, it is a symbolic gesture that is not really going to the heart of things. And we have heard that from both my co-panelists from the Clinton Administration that the objections of people who are concerned about American sovereignty are just about symbolism and all of them insist there is no threat to American sovereignty here. If you get past the symbolism, there is no threat to American sovereignty.
But then when they go on to explain why we need to keep the World Heritage Convention intact and they talk about other countries, they say this would undermine U.S. leadership, this would undermine the influence of this convention. And it seems that for other countries it is not just symbolic. It seems that for other countries their sovereignty is not something to be absolutely relied on. It seems that we expect we will be able to influence other people but we won't be influenced.
Now I actually think it is a plausible argument that this finally has no influence on anybody who doesn't want to be influenced. There is no ultimate sanction here except removing something from a list and if you want to shrug that off, you can. On the other hand, if we are going to take this seriously, we have to assume that it means something to be removed from the list, that countries are intimidated by that, they are embarrassed by the bad publicity. So I think it is reasonable to say, yes, it does mean something and we should worry about how this, if you want to call it symbolism, bad publicity, embarrassment is wielded against us. I think that is a minimally responsible thing.
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Let me add one other thing that is not in my testimony but I think is a point worth making here. My guess is that if you look over the history of this, it is certainly my impression from reading past minutes, this does exert influence, this system the World Heritage Convention system, it does exert influence on the ''nice'' countries, on the Western countries, on the developed countries. And it exerts influence on them because they have local NGOs or local political opponents who say, ''Oh, oh, we got in trouble. Look, we were condemned. This is serious. This is important. We have to do something about it.'' If you have local people to work with, then UNESCO or the World Heritage Committee can have some influence.
I will quickly proceed to tell you a story about Australia where I think this is exactly what happened. And I think that is more or less what happened in Yellowstone. The countries where it is most important for us to exert influence, it seems to me, are less developed countries and less democratic countries, and I think for those countries the World Heritage Convention means about as much as the Convention on Civil and Political Rights. China signed that human rights convention and within the past year has been arresting everyone who mentions it in public in China. It similarly has signed the World Heritage Convention and I wouldn't give two cents for the amount of influence or leverage you are going to have on China because it is basically a dictatorship and they will silence people who try to talk about this convention, and the World Heritage Committee knows that. And, anyway, it is basically connected with UNESCO and, as Ambassador Kirkpatrick said, UNESCO is a very corrupt, very politicized organization.
So I think probably when you get down to this, it can only be used effectively against Western countries, which means it is more likely to be used against us than it is likely to be used in a useful way against countries that we would like to encourage to improve their protection of natural and historic sites.
Let me quickly tell you this story about Australia and then draw some morals from it. Within the past year, there has been a big dispute in Australia about one of their sites, the Kakadu National Park which is in the Northern Territories in Australia. It has been listed as a World Heritage Site since the early 1980s. All of that time they have set aside certain areas adjoining the park for mining. There has been a mine operating there now for almost twenty years and there hasn't been any complaint about it. Another parcel of land which was set aside for mining, they have over the last few years studied whether it would be all right to have mining go on there. And the Australian government, after two-and-a-half years of extensive, careful review, more or less analogous to our environmental impact studies, decided, yes, you can go ahead and do mining there.
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Opponents of the mine then appealed to the World Heritage Committee. It was a very political process. You had opposition members of parliament writing to the committee. You had people involved in the Green Party in Australia appealing to Green Party members in Europe—particularly, the German Foreign Minister, who now is from the Green Party, and they also found allies in France—and they got European countries to express an interest in this. They got the European parliament to say this was wrong. And then, of course, they got the World Heritage Committee to say, yes, this is wrong and we are going to say that your park is in danger.
Now the Australian government said, look, this is our park. We are sovereign—they said all the things that Congressman Vento and my colleagues here have said you are allowed to say—this is our decision. And the World Heritage Committee told them, no, you are wrong, you better not do this. And they have these domestic opponents of the mine saying, ''Oh, look, we are in trouble now. We have violated international law. We are going to be an international outlaw. We will become a pariah. This is terrible.'' And the government is in a considerable bind. That I think is the kind of thing we have to worry about.
Let me just draw three quick morals. First, I think there is a Constitutional question here about whether we can get into treaties that have nothing to do with international exchange. I think you might be able to defend the World Heritage Convention if you focus on the exchange of tourists. But you want to be careful to say what is it really that this is about, what is being focused on. And in the Australian case, the World Heritage Committee said this will have a negative impact on local aboriginal people in the Northern Territories. So you have this international committee coming in and saying what we are really protecting is the relations of the Australian government with its own people. If that is what this is about, I question whether the United States can constitutionally participate.
Second, I think there is a question, okay, we could commit ourselves to a treaty text but can we go from a treaty text to regulations and interpretations made by an international committee under that treaty. And I think there is serious constitutional doubts about that. But that is what has happened here. The issue in Australia, as in Yellowstone, was not actually the site but areas adjoining the site. How do areas adjoining the site become subject to the World Heritage Convention? The answer is the Committee has decided on its own that that is what should happen; there should be a buffer zone and they added that to the treaty. Can we sign not only a treaty but have with the treaty a blank check to an administrative body to expand the reach and meaning of the treaty?
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And finally, if we can make, which I think we can, certain kinds of submissions to the International Court of Justice or to arbitration panels of the WTO where it is understood to be a judicial or quasi-judicial procedure, can we really do that with just the same constitutional integrity if we are making a submission to what is basically a world political body, almost a sort of quasi-legislature, which is what really the World Heritage Committee has made itself into.
One last point. I would just like to disagree slightly with what Jeane Kirkpatrick said, of course, I agree with the substance of what she said, but she kept saying it is one country, one vote under the World Heritage Convention. It is worse than that. There are more than one hundred countries that have signed, but when it comes to making these rules and making these determinations they don't all of them vote one country, one vote. There is a very elite list of twenty-one countries represented on the committee. We have usually been on that committee but there is no reason to expect that we will always be on that committee. So we could be condemned by a forum in which we not only are just one of many, but we might not even be one. We might not be represented at all on this committee and still we are giving to this committee the power to condemn us and to help opponents of some policy here mobilize opposition.
That is not the way our government is supposed to work. You cannot talk about grassroots activity here. We have an elected Congress. They are supposed to make decisions, not some coalition of NGO activists and international sponsors in other countries meeting in Geneva or Kyoto or somewhere else. We ought to be able to decide for ourselves what we think is proper in our own territory, and I think this bill will help us to do that. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Rabkin may be found at the end of the hearing.]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Dr. Rabkin, for your testimony.
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Now we will open the hearing up to questions from the members.
The Chair recognizes Mrs. Cubin.
Mrs. CUBIN. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I was busy passing out Girl Scout cookies to the staff up here.
I really appreciated the testimony of the panel. I want you to know I gave up complaining for Lent. Next year, I am going to give up smoking for Lent. I haven't smoked in twenty-one years and I think I will be much more successful at that. So I don't want you to think that the remarks that I am making and the questions I am asking are complaining. But I have to talk a little bit about what happened in Yellowstone, since I represent Wyoming.
I truly appreciate Dr. Rabkin's comments. I also don't understand how what happened in Wyoming reflects that it was a grassroots effort that came in and declared that Yellowstone was a site in danger. The New World Mine had been in the process of completing an Environmental Impact Statement for three years. The information that was coming out indicated that the mine developed outside of Yellowstone would, in fact, did not damage Yellowstone. I was not in favor of developing that mine, don't get me wrong, but I am in favor of following the process that has been established for the Environmental Impact Statement and the process that has been established to enforce the laws of the United States of America.
So three years this goes on and they were ready to make their report. UNESCO came in and in three days, without even seeing all of the documentation and the studies that had been put forward for the EIS, three days later they determined that this was a Heritage area in danger.
I can't see how in any way that is a grassroots effort. And I absolutely agree that the political pressure that is brought to bear just by virtue of the fact that publicity comes forward, oh, my goodness, Yellowstone is now in danger, totally disregarding the facts, the watershed that would have supplied the New World Mine did not even go to Yellowstone; it went in an entirely different direction. So I just agree with Ambassador Kirkpatrick that we have to have people from the United States representing our own best interests.
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Would you respond, Dr. Rabkin, on the things that happened in Yellowstone and comment on that for me.
Dr. RABKIN. Well, I agree with everything that you said. I think that was a very troubling episode. And it is troubling because, contrary to what the defenders of the existing system are saying, this was very intrusive. You brought in an international inspection team to say you are handling this in the wrong way, you in the United States should not be doing this, you should be doing something else, otherwise we will condemn you by declaring your site in danger.
And you see the potential for mischief here in the fact that American Executive officials basically were in cahoots with this international organ——
Mrs. CUBIN. Right. They were invited in by the BLM.
Dr. RABKIN. They paid for it, they facilitated it, and then they went to the meeting of the World Heritage Committee and said we don't object if you say that Yellowstone is in danger. So what you are basically doing is, in some cases, supplying an international megaphone to a mid-level executive bureaucrat. Mr. Frampton is a fine fellow and everything but he shouldn't on his own be able to make decisions.
Mrs. CUBIN. Right.
Dr. RABKIN. And we gave him a global megaphone to say the world has said that this mine is wrong. That's not how we are supposed to make decisions in this country.
Mrs. CUBIN. What I perceive my job as being is preserving the process that is established by law.
Dr. RABKIN. Yes.
Mrs. CUBIN. The outcome is beyond my expertise—I am a chemist—it is beyond my expertise and beyond actually my judgement about it other than as a citizen. Because when the scientists come forward and say these are the facts and this is what should be done, then we have to respect that these are the facts or that they are not the facts. And what happened here was the total process was interrupted and the process was not allowed to go on. Frankly, I don't under——
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Dr. RABKIN. Could I just add one thing?
Mrs. CUBIN. Please?
Dr. RABKIN. When there is a dispute about an environmental review in this country, you have all kinds of safeguards which the Congress has legislated. You have judicial review, you have due process requirements so that people can say, wait a minute, this is junk science, this is not a fair review, this was done improperly, and you can appeal and you can have an authoritative judgement saying no, that was not properly done, do it over again. There is, of course, nothing like that at the international level, which is why a number of these reviews, and people say this about the Australian case as well, are not only slipshod, but they are utterly partisan and tendentious. People basically go in there with a preconceived notion of what is wrong and then write up a report saying, yes, it really is wrong.
And that kind of thing you have no recourse for. There are no international courts that you can complain to, there is no international congress to complain to. You have just basically turned loose these international busybodies who do their own intriguing, and that is not a process.
Mrs. CUBIN. And the entire process was interrupted before it was allowed to go to completion and before, like you said, the scoping hearings were allowed to occur. It was truly an intrusion on the laws of the United States of America.
Mr. YEAGER. Madam Chairman, may I be given a chance to respond to this question since it involves activities of the Department of the Interior?
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Yeager, we are in the questioning process right now. I am sure Mr. Vento will be asking you about it.
So the Chair recognizes Mr. Vento.
Mr. VENTO. Thank you, Madam Chairman. As far as I know, you are here to testify on the constitutional basis. Mr. Rabkin, are you aware of any constitutional decisions that have been made that these events violate the Constitution? Do you have a yes or no answer?
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Dr. RABKIN. They haven't been litigated, so no.
Mr. VENTO. There is none. None.
Dr. RABKIN. Not yet.
Mr. VENTO. Ms. Kirkpatrick, are you aware of any designations that have gone on in which a nation did not want the designation?
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Yes. I am aware of processes having been set underway without the nation involved desiring a designation. Let me just say, the issue is the process. It is the question of representation and responsibility and accountability——
Dr. RABKIN. Israel. Israel was condemned——
Mr. VENTO. Mr. Rabkin, I didn't ask——
Dr. RABKIN. Israel was condemned as well.
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Exactly. Jerusalem was designated against the desire of the State of Israel, absolutely.
Mr. VENTO. It is one of the RAMSAR. It is a site in danger that——
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. No, but it has been designated a World Heritage Site against the desire and against the opposition of the State of Israel.
Mr. VENTO. Excuse me, Ms. Kirkpatrick. I think it was a candidate site. In fact, most of them themselves nominate these particular sites.
Now in terms of the Yellowstone case, Mr. Yeager wanted to join in and say something. I invite him to do so at this point. But in fact, that was after the fact. It doesn't make any difference how it became a Man and the Biosphere or World Heritage Site, this is an incident or something that occurred after the site. As far as I know, the Department of Interior used its authorities that it has under law and granted by this Congress to accomplish the end, didn't it, Mr. Yeager?
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Mr. YEAGER. Yes, that is correct, Representative Vento. I wanted to try to correct the record, although there was quite a long exchange about the Yellowstone situation. But I was involved at some levels in that discussion inside the Administration over time and have some personal knowledge of the facts. It is my belief that the visit of the World Heritage inspection group had absolutely no significance whatsoever for any of the decisions that were made with regard to Yellowstone.
The Park Service was, in fact, a participating agency in the Yellowstone EIS and the Park Service believed then and believes now that the New World Mine would have caused damage to Yellowstone National Park. In fact, one of the drainages from the mine does drain directly into Miller Creek which drains into the Park. And there was considerable technical information to that effect even in the course of developing the EIS.
Representative Cubin is correct, the EIS was never finished, but that was not the result of the intervention of the World Heritage Committee, it was the result of a decision by the President. It was a decision that the President is quite proud of, that the Secretary of Interior supports, and that we all believe was made correctly according to U.S. law and that resulted in the protection of the park.
Mr. VENTO. The authorities exercised did not flow from the Man and the Biosphere or the World Heritage Convention or the RAMSAR Treaty?
Mr. YEAGER. No, they did not.
Mr. VENTO. They flowed from power that this Congress has conveyed and bestowed upon the land management agencies in the Department of Interior specifically.
Mr. YEAGER. That is absolutely correct.
Mr. VENTO. Ms. Kimble, can you tell us what the effect of the State Department—what clear agreements, other than RAMSAR, might be affected by a blanket prohibition contained in this bill? What would be the affect on these conventions, treaties, and protocols?
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Ms. KIMBLE. I think you have to look at conventions in force. I think we have looked particularly at this bill which gets to land-use issues as primarily affecting the RAMSAR Wetlands Convention. We don't have other major conventions outside of World Heritage itself that deal with land-use right now.
Mr. VENTO. So would this bring to a stop any type of designation of these types of sites in North America? Don't we have treaty obligations under the Migratory Bird Treaty and so forth?
Ms. KIMBLE. Well, let me say, the Migratory Bird Treaty is a very important treaty, but I see RAMSAR as most important in terms of encouraging the protection of wetlands globally and certainly in the Hemisphere. It is not only the United States that has obligations to protect its wetlands. Our obligations are consistent with RAMSAR but are based on Federal law under the Clean Water Act. But other States have made their obligations consistent with RAMSAR under their legislation. This means RAMSAR encourages Mexico and Canada, for instance, to also protect these sites.
So the real strength of RAMSAR is promoting international cooperation on wetlands protection. Obviously, we believe the United States should be an active participant. Although you will note that when we ratified RAMSAR we believed that our existing legislation was sufficient to implement it.
Mr. VENTO. Yes. Ambassador Kirkpatrick, during the 1980s when we withdrew from UNESCO, did you protest? Were you of a different opinion at that time with the then Reagan Administration authorities with regards to continued participation in World Heritage and Man and the Biosphere and the other programs?
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. No. Let me just say that the implementation of these programs is—my point, I didn't make it very clearly—it is a direct consequence of the political forces inside the United Nations bodies at that time. The fact is that the United Nations is a highly political institution, just like the U.S. Congress is, and it is supposed to be. But it was not functioning in a way that demonstrated such undesirable political consequences.
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Mr. VENTO. We set aside these programs and stayed in them.
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. That's right. No, no, because they were not objectionable. They were functioning adequately at that time.
Mr. VENTO. But do you think that we ought to at this point abandon this particular type of role, as has been implied here by the other witness on the panel, Dr. Rabkin, do you think we ought to abandon participation in these particular programs?
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. Do I believe the United States should withdraw from participation in these programs?
Mr. VENTO. Yes.
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. I have never suggested it. I do believe, however, that the Congress has both an obligation and a responsibility to participate in decisions that affect American citizens and property.
Mr. VENTO. But the point is there is no constitutional challenge to the fact that the Congress has given authority to the State Department and others to, in fact, do this. There is no constitutional question here in your mind, is there?
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. There are constitutional questions in my mind concerning the implementation of some of these powers.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I thank the gentleman for your questions.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Pombo.
Mr. POMBO. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I yield to the woman from Wyoming.
Mrs. CUBIN. Thank you, Mr. Pombo.
I would like to respond to Mr. Yeager. The outcome is exactly what I wanted it to be. What I am absolutely opposed to is how I think the process was violated. And let me tell you how that was violated. The Administration had a desired outcome and what they did when they invited UNESCO in was it was a part, and a big part, but it was only a part of getting the desired outcome. Now, if I am satisfied that the ends justify the means, then that is okay with me. But I am not. My job, and I think all of our jobs, is to protect the process.
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And while this Administration may like the outcome that they got this time, when another administration with an entirely different philosophy about the environment and about these issues comes into play, if we allow this sort of thing to continue, then they are not going to like the outcome the next time and neither are you. And that was the point that I was trying to make.
Mr. POMBO. Reclaiming my time. To follow up somewhat on the point that Mrs. Cubin was making, Ms. Kimble, can you clarify for me what authority exists under these programs? What can they do?
Ms. KIMBLE. Let me say, these programs are designed to promote international cooperation and to recognize sites that have specific ecological, cultural, or scientific value. Congressional authority was certainly given for the World Heritage Convention when the Senate gave advice and consent and the Congress subsequently passed implementing legislation.
Mr. POMBO. No. What authority is under these agreements? What can they do? Do they have land-use authority?
Ms. KIMBLE. The only thing they can do is put sites on a registry. In the case of the World Heritage Convention, sites that are nominated by states party to the convention go on a registry as World Heritage Sites and the World Heritage Committee, which the United States has continued to participate in as a member since we left UNESCO, continues to review the operation of these sites.
I just checked, for instance, to see how many sites are listed in other countries. Many, many more developing country sites have been listed than developed country sites, in part because developing countries do not have the capacity to protect their sites. And many of these listings of the World Heritage Convention saying these sites were in danger prompted action by the world community, including technical assistance and aid, to help these countries protect their sites.
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Other sites have been brought to the attention of the World Heritage Committee. For instance, I was familiar with a case when I was working in international organizations when Dubrovnik in Yugoslavia was listed as a site in danger because of the ongoing war in the former Yugoslavia.
So what this committee does is it identifies places of significant importance under terms of the World Heritage Convention, the World Heritage Convention continues to monitor these sites and report on them. And it is truly an issue of peer pressure and support, but it is cast truly in most cases in a very positive light encouraging countries to protect these sites. The purpose of the World Heritage Convention, as the Nixon Administration saw it, was to promote protection, and that I think was a constructive objective.
Mr. POMBO. Under the scenario that you describe of what they are able to do, it is somewhat confusing because some of the victories that are claimed under these sites, all of the wonderful things that they do, in your testimony and in other people's testimony, the claim is made that these are totally voluntary; they have no regulatory authority, they have no ability to tell anybody what to do.
At the same time, in quoting from your prepared statement, you say it ''played a key role in the effort to restore the Coho salmon to areas of northern California through the Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve Program.'' If they have no regulatory authority, no ability to tell us what to do, if they do not threaten our sovereignty, there is no ability to do anything, yet they claim helping to recover an endangered species.
Ms. KIMBLE. Let me make a very clear distinction, if I could. First of all, Man and the Biosphere and the Biosphere Reserve Program is a United States program that operates in connection with the broader UNESCO program. The purpose of that program is voluntary scientific cooperation. In the case of the Coho salmon, designating the area as a Biosphere Reserve promoted more active engagement in scientific studies in programs to help restore the salmon population in that area.
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Mr. POMBO. More active than what?
Ms. KIMBLE. The action was taken by individual——
Mr. POMBO. Excuse me, it is my time. More active than what currently exists under NMFS, and Fish and Wildlife, and the Sport Fishing Association, and all of the different organizations that are involved in trying to recover the Coho salmon? This has been a major ongoing deal in Northern California, one that I am painfully aware of.
Ms. KIMBLE. Let me say, as I understand——
Mr. POMBO. To come in here and claim credit for——
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Will the gentleman hold, please?
Mr. POMBO. I do have further questions.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I know you do.
Ms. Kimble, will you please let Mr. Pombo finish his statement.
Mr. POMBO. My time has expired. I do have other questions for the witnesses and I will wait until everybody has had the opportunity to ask their first round of questions. Thank you.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you very much.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Inslee for questions.
Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Dr. Rabkin, I have been listening with interest to your discussion of the constitutional question you have raised. I want to tell you there are folks who on occasion come here to Congress and they make arguments that certain things are unconstitutional. It is really great theater, it is really great propaganda, it really does a lot of things to inflame people, to make them think that legitimate treaties that have been confirmed by the United States Senate somehow are going to end up with black helicopters coming across the border in Canada. I want to tell you that when leaders talk about that it does inflame people's passions and it does make them actually believe that the black helicopters are coming across the border.
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I want to tell you that frequently there are people who come here and argue that certain things are unconstitutional knowing that they have never ever gone through the legitimate means that are established to challenge the constitutionality of an Act or a treaty adopted by Congress and yet come in here and argue for weeks and months and years that certain things are unconstitutional back to their constituents when they have never tested that issue in the courts of this country.
Now my understanding is, and your answer to Mr. Vento's question, that neither you nor anyone else has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of this issue. If that is true, I want you to tell me if you are one of those folks who come here and argue the constitutionality of statutes and never actually go through the means of testing that issue in the courts of this land?
Dr. RABKIN. The Supreme Court of the United States does not give advisory opinions. You cannot show up and say I would like some advice. You have to have an actual case or controversy. I have in other contexts argued that people are much, much too promiscuous in going into the courts and trying to make everything into a Federal case. It would be very difficult to mount a Federal case about this because you would have to show that somebody was directly coerced by it.
Mr. INSLEE. This has been on the books, one of these bills, since 1973, the other one has been here since sometime during the Reagan Administration. Are you telling me that our system of justice is so incompetent and impotent that it prevents American citizens from ruling the constitutionality of this? Is that what you are telling this Committee?
Dr. RABKIN. I would not put it that way. But if you look at treaties generally, you will see there are hardly any cases about treaties because it is very difficult directly to challenge the treaty.
Mr. INSLEE. Have you made any effort to challenge these treaties in the courts of our land?
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Dr. RABKIN. I personally have not.
Mr. INSLEE. Do you know anybody who has come forward from the Yellowstone incident that people are complaining about, or any of these instances and said this is a terrible affront to the constitutional process of this country, it has got to be ruled unconstitutional by the courts. Have you done that? Has anybody done that? Or do they instead just come to the Congress and bleat and whine about this year after year and never test this issue. Is that what has happened here?
Dr. RABKIN. I do really think you are misunderstanding. You cannot, just because you have an argument or a view or a principle, get it into court. There has to be an actual case where you can show that someone was directly coerced, and I don't think that has happened yet.
Mr. INSLEE. Apparently no one has even tried to have a judicial interpretation of this issue. Is that an accurate statement to your knowledge?
Dr. RABKIN. I think that is accurate.
Mr. INSLEE. But it is accurate that people have come month after month, year after year to this Congress and made that argument, yourself included. Is that accurate?
Dr. RABKIN. Oh, I don't know if it was month after month. But people have made that argument, sure.
Mr. INSLEE. So isn't it true that you are in the wrong place. You ought to be in the judicial system to get an interpretation of this, don't you think?
Dr. RABKIN. I totally disagree with you, sir. I think it is very important for the Congress of the United States to uphold the Constitution and not shrug its shoulders and say, oh, well, go to court. You have taken an oath yourself, sir, to uphold the Constitution. You should take that oath seriously. You should not berate citizens when they come to you and ask you to honor that oath.
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Mr. INSLEE. I appreciate your reminding me of the oath that I have taken and have fulfilled hour by hour, day by day to the last dog dies, and I will do that. But it is a serious issue. I just want to tell you it is troublesome to me because we get this in other context, just not in the Resources Committee, where people raise constitutional issues. And when I say why don't we get a ruling on this, we have a branch of government that can give us an answer to this, for some reason they are very reluctant to ever do that. And I will tell you why they are reluctant. Because they know the Supreme Court would rule these are constitutional. That is why the U.S. Senate has confirmed them. Thank you, Mr. Rabkin.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you, Mr. Inslee.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Tancredo.
Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Mr. Yeager, what is your relationship—you mentioned earlier that you had some personal involvement with and understanding of the issues revolving around the Yellowstone Park issue. If you could help me out here and just tell me, what is your relationship, for instance, to the National Park Superintendent, Mr. Finley? Do you know him?
Mr. YEAGER. I do know him, yes.
Mr. TANCREDO. In what capacity are you aware of his work?
Mr. YEAGER. I am the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs. Among the offices that report to me is an office called the Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance. When we have the responsibility to comment or to participate in NEPA work, work under the Environmental Policy Act, assessments or impact statements that are done by other agencies, that office helps to coordinate the bureau's responses and to make sure that our responses are consistent and does necessary technical work with the bureaus.
So in that capacity, among others, I was asked to look into this issue. There was quite a long technical discussion that involved all the agencies about the mine. I can tell you that that technical discussion was extensive, got into great detail about elements of the EIS, was participated in by people, among others, the water quality staff of the Park Service in Denver, the Bureau of Reclamation dam experts, and others who had technical expertise on issues raised in the EIS.
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Mr. TANCREDO. Would you consider Mr. Finley to have that kind of technical expertise? Would he have been a participant at any point along the line in any of the discussions? Would he have been made aware of the technical aspects of it?
Mr. YEAGER. I assume as the Superintendent he was made aware. But he was not actually a participant in the discussions, no. The discussions were held largely by technical people.
Mr. TANCREDO. But you feel, to the extent that you are able to, and I recognize that there is some separation between your responsibility and his that might not allow you to have a definitive knowledge here, but you feel comfortable that he would have had a good working knowledge of the World Heritage Sites?
Mr. YEAGER. I honestly can't testify to his knowledge. I view him as a competent Park Superintendent.
Mr. TANCREDO. Let me ask you to make an assumption given his responsibilities as a National Park Superintendent. Would you think he would have had at least a working knowledge of the World Heritage Sites provisions?
Mr. YEAGER. My assumption is that he would have had a working knowledge of all issues affecting his park.
Mr. TANCREDO. Then how would you have responded to the following quote by Mr. Finley as appeared in the Casper Star Tribune, September 9, 1995, a copy of which I have here. ''As ratified by Congress, the provisions of the World Heritage Treaty have the force and statutory authority of Federal law. By inviting the committee to visit the park and assess the mine's potential impacts, the Interior Department acted as it was legally required to do.''
Mr. YEAGER. What is the question?
Mr. TANCREDO. How would you respond to that? Would you say that is an accurate statement?
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Mr. YEAGER. I probably would not. You would have to read it again for me to respond.
Mr. TANCREDO. Let me do that. How about if I just gave you——
Mr. YEAGER. Representative Tancredo, maybe it would be better for me to read to you how our solicitor has interpreted our responsibility to the World Heritage——
Mr. TANCREDO. I am really interested in your opinion of it.
Mr. YEAGER. I understand that you value my opinion. But I think there are those in the government whose job it is to make legal interpretations and I generally try to follow them, and our solicitor is one of those people. Neither Mike Finley, the superintendent, nor I are asked to render legal opinions about the position of the United States——
Mr. TANCREDO. He did, of course, do exactly that here, he rendered a legal opinion.
Mr. YEAGER. Well, with your permission, if you ask for my personal response, I would ask the solicitor. And here is what the solicitor says. ''As a party to the World Heritage Convention, the United States has undertaken to take the appropriate legal, scientific, technical, administrative, and financial measures necessary for the identification, protection, conservation, presentation, and rehabilitation of natural and cultural heritage features designated in U.S. territory. In our view, this obligation is discharged entirely within the framework of the appropriate U.S. and State laws. Therefore, the World Heritage Committee's recent decision to name the Yellowstone National Park to the World Heritage List of Sites in Danger does not impinge in any way on the United States sovereignty and does not supplant the——
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Mr. TANCREDO. That is really not the question I asked you. You are responding to a question I did not ask.
[Simultaneous conversation.]
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Yeager, you are responding to a question I did not ask.
Mr. YEAGER. I would like to finish——
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Excuse me, will the gentlemen hold, please. The Congressman has the time and he is controlling the time. I would appreciate your respecting that. Thank you.
Mr. TANCREDO. I will simply end my time, and I know we are running out of time here, but I guess it is my observation here that apparently it is not just some wayward enthusiasts who might have an incorrect impression about what this whole program is about and may be coming here idealistically asking us to deal with it. Maybe it is even people like the superintendent of the National Park who has a misinterpretation of exactly what this is all about.
So perhaps it is not all that illogical for us to be pursing it from the standpoint that there are aspects of this that are appropriately brought before us today and I think this bill appropriately addresses those aspects. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Mark Udall.
Mr. UDALL OF COLORADO. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank the panel for taking time to speak with us today and help us understand this important issue a little more in depth.
Ms. Kimble, I had a question for you. It seems to me from what I have been hearing that really what has been said is the United States took the lead in establishing a lot of these programs in the 1970s. Is that right?
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Ms. KIMBLE. We took the lead in establishing the World Heritage Convention. We subsequently joined the Man and the Biosphere Program at UNESCO some three years after it was formed.
Mr. UDALL OF COLORADO. In that spirit, Madam Chair, if I might, I would like to read a short paragraph out of a letter that I received and ask that the rest of the letter be included in the record.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Without objection.
Mr. UDALL OF COLORADO. Thank you, Madam Chair. The letter is addressed to me, of course, and it says ''Dear Congressman Udall, I write to urge you to oppose H.R. 883, the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act, sponsored by Resources Committee Chairman Don Young. This legislation is neither warranted nor wise. It is an unfounded attack on international conservation programs that recognize areas in the world that are of '
'outstanding universal value.' Contrary to this bill, I believe the Congress should strengthen and encourage measures that would lead to greater participation by the United States in the World Heritage Convention, RAMSAR Wetlands Convention, the Biosphere Reserve Program, and other worthwhile international conservation programs.''
This letter is from the Honorable Russell Train, who served on the Council of Environmental Quality for President Nixon. It points out to me the bipartisan nature of the creation of many of these efforts around the world. I would ask, as I mentioned earlier, that the rest of the letter be included in the record.
[The information may be found at the end of the hearing.]
Mr. UDALL OF COLORADO. If I might make one other comment, it seems to me, Mr. Yeager, you can confirm or disagree with me, in attempting to respond to Mr. Tancredo's question, you were saying that Mr. Finley is an excellent superintendent but the Solicitor is a better attorney. Is that true?
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Mr. YEAGER. That is much more elegantly put. Thank you very much.
Mr. UDALL OF COLORADO. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. VENTO. Would the gentleman yield to me briefly on that point?
Mr. UDALL OF COLORADO. Sure.
Mr. VENTO. Thank you. I would just point out, I don't intend to extend my questioning period, but I would just point out that we are relying on a newspaper article here, too. Superintendent Finley has been in a number of parks including the Everglades which is also designated as a Man and the Biosphere Reserve. So I think that we are just relying on a newspaper article here in terms of what he might have said. I think that if we really want to find out what his view is or how this impacted, I think that would be appropriate. I think it could also be interpreted that he was saying what is consistent with the existing laws and authorities that exist in terms of that area, which, incidentally, has BLM, Forest Service, Native American lands, and a whole variety of lands in what is called the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. UDALL OF COLORADO. Thank you, Mr. Vento.
I see I have a little bit of time left. I might add that Russell Train at the end of his letter pointed out that areas in the United States including private lands recognized under international agreements are subject only to domestic law. ''There is no international legal protection or sanction for these areas. Thus, I am opposed to requiring congressional authorization of a site prior to nomination or designation.'' And I think he makes that additional point that I think we need to make here.
So, Madam Chair, I thank you for the time and yield back the remainder.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Thank you Mr. Udall.
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The Chair now has some questions. The issue of the New World Mine has been quite prominent in this hearing and I want to get some things on the record.
First, that the World Mine operated on private property through a patent, and that there were fourteen nongovernmental organizations who had appealed to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. They in turn, on March 6, 1995, wrote a letter to Mr. George Frampton, Department of Interior, in which they stated to him the following: The World Heritage Committee has the authority to act unilaterally in placing a site on the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger. Now I would like to juxtapose that to Article IV, section 3 of the Constitution which clearly says that Congress needs to make all needful rules and regulations.
I do not believe that it takes a battery of lawyers, Supreme Court Justices, and everybody else to understand the clarity of those two positions. Our United States Constitution is exceedingly clear as to Congress' responsibilities. I furthermore do not believe that a constitutional issue should be run by the Supreme Court before the Congress deals with it. I think we have to have the boldness and the courage and the tenacity to study these issues and to respond in a manner that is thoughtful, as our constituents would expect us to. I think to do otherwise simply engages us in the old paralysis of analysis.
The statement that was contained in the March 6, 1995, letter to Interior Assistant Secretary George Frampton is an official communication that needs to be taken very seriously because that letter goes on to state the following: ''It is important to note that Article I of the World Heritage Convention obliges the State party to protect, conserve, present, and transmit to future generations World Heritage Sites for which they are responsible. This obligation extends beyond the boundary of this site, and Article 5(a) recommends that State parties integrate the protection of sites into comprehensive planning programs.'' Now we must remember that this document was generated as a response to fourteen NGOs recommending that the World Mine be taken into this world jurisdiction.
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So without objection, I would like to enter into the record this letter to Mr. Frampton. Is there any objection? Hearing none, so ordered.
[The information may be found at the end of the hearing.]
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I do have a question for Dr. Kirkpatrick. What advice can you give the Congress to improve its oversight of international organizations such as the situation we are dealing with here?
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. I do believe that the oversight of multilateral organizations poses some very special problems actually for any legislative body vested with oversight. The reason being that multilateral organizations characteristically not only practice bureaucratic decision-making of necessity, but that bureaucratic decision-making is a good many steps further removed from an elective body than the bureaucratic decision-making in a single government. It is easier for the Congress of the United States to practice oversight of the U.S. Government, U.S. bureaucracy, though that is not easy, as we know.
The oversight of international organizations is complicated because the countries engaged have different views concerning the appropriateness of oversight, concerning the rectitude, if you will, of oversight, and concerning which bodies have the right, in fact, to oversight. And the United Nations is a very complex organization.
By the way, may I just say that I don't believe that the issue here is conservation or environment or whether there should be World Heritage Sites. I think the issue is who should be charged with protecting them and developing them and how that should be determined. Under the American system, I believe that the chain of elected representation and responsibility and accountability is absolutely essential. All our individual rights are vested in that chain of representation and responsibility and accountability, and that chain has the most tenuous possible connections with operations of multinational bureaucratic organizations.
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The only way really that the Congress can exercise that oversight I think virtually is to try to work through its own departments charged with the management of representation in those organizations. So that the Congress would work through the State Department and through other environmental agencies. And that is one of the problems. It just makes it that much more difficult to reflect and represent and respond to popular opinion, to the opinion of Americans. And I wish you good luck. I think it is very difficult to practice oversight of those organizations.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. It is a challenge.
Ms. KIRKPATRICK. It is a challenge.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. I want to thank the witnesses very much for your valuable testimony. I do want you to know that you have five working days to extend or amend your testimony should you wish. We would look forward to any additions that you might have of your testimony.
Excuse me, I am reminded by counsel that it is ten working days.
Dr. RABKIN. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Mrs. CHENOWETH. You are welcome.
Mr. VENTO. Will we get the testimony from Jeane Kirkpatrick today?
Mrs. CHENOWETH. Yes, I think it will come up through the recorder.
I want to thank these witnesses very much and excuse this panel of witnesses. Thank you for your time.
Now I would like to turn the Committee over to Barbara Cubin. I have to go to the floor for a speech and she will take the Chair for a while. Thank you.
Mrs. CUBIN. [PRESIDING] We will now hear from our second panel. We have Mr. Stephen Lindsey from Elgin, Arizona; Mr. David B. Rovig, President, Greystar Resources, Billings, Montana; Ms. Ann Webster Smith, Chairman Emeritus, U.S. Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, Washington, DC; and Ms. Laurel MacLeod, Director of Legislation and Public Policy, Concerned Women for America, Washington, DC.
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Mr. VENTO. Madam Chair, I am going to have to excuse myself, but I do want to welcome the witnesses, especially the witness from ICOMOS who is a long-time witness before the Committee on these particular issues. We have oversight hearings every year on the budget and we would bring them in when I had that responsibility, and I am pleased to see her back.
Ms. SMITH. Thank you.
Mrs. CUBIN. All right, everyone is at the witness table now.
I would like to recognize Mr. Lindsey for his oral testimony. As Chairman Chenoweth mentioned, we do limit the oral testimony to five minutes but your entire statement will be printed in the record. And if you will just watch the lights there, the yellow light tells you when you have sixty seconds left. And we will be better about watching our time, too.
So, Mr. Lindsey?
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN G. LINDSEY, ELGIN, ARIZONA
Mr. LINDSEY. I really thank you for letting me come here. I do appreciate being asked to come. There are a lot of doctors and folks who have a lot more knowledge than me. I work the land. I am a rancher in Southeast Arizona. My name is Steve Lindsey, and I live in Canelo, Arizona, a little burg there as you are headed towards Parker Canyon Lake, about 75 miles Southeast of Tucson on the west side of the Hoecake Mountains. The ranch that my family owns borders the Fort Hoecake on the east side.
The history of the ranch, my great-great-grandfather moved into the area in 1866 and homesteaded in what is now Parker Canyon. In 1910, my great-grandfather moved down to Canelo where we live now and homesteaded a piece. His house burned down in 1923 and he bought the adjacent homestead. We are now living in that house that he bought in 1923.
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In 1996, the Southwest Center for Biodiversity petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list as endangered the Canelo Hills Ladies Tresses along with two other cienegas species, cienega being a wetland, in Spanish it means a swamp. Everybody now calls them ''riparian areas'' but for years we just called them cienegas. They petitioned them to list these species.
The Canelo Hills Ladies Tresses grows there on our place. It is found in five different places around the country that they know of and is doing best on our place where it is grazed, is doing the worst on the Nature Conservancy where it is not grazed. So as you can see in the Federal Register, you can look this up and you can see that the grazing is not detrimental to this plant.
After it was listed in 1997, through a lot of public input and a lot of fights and a lot of things—I didn't figure it needed to be listed, my family didn't figure it needed to be listed—after it was listed in January of 1997, in February of 1997, through the paper—Mr. Vento was talking about a newspaper article—through the paper the Phoenix Republic we found out that the Southwest Center for Biodiversity was now petitioning Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to put our 310 acres, well 60 acres of wetland, under the RAMSAR Treaty. I didn't even know what a RAMSAR Treaty was back then. I made some phone calls and that's what I am doing here now is trying to figure out what in the world is going on petitioning Bruce Babbitt instead of why aren't we coming to Congress and why are we making my private property part of the public input. What is going on here? That is what I am doing here is trying to find out.
I read the other day that a country's most important natural resource is their children. How true that is. I have got nine children. My wife is my staff, she came with me here today. We have been ranching on this place since fourth generation right there on that place, fifth generation rancher in Southeast Arizona. I am desiring with all my heart to pass this ranch on down to my sons and my daughters. I don't see why, being that we have been ranching and we have had a viable cattle outfit for all of those years, why we now need international oversight.
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I have heard a lot of the discussions today about different things that will be able to be done through these conventions. And Karen Suckling, of the Southwest Center for Biodiversity, said in the newspaper article, ''By protecting these Arizona wetlands through the RAMSAR Convention, we get international oversight.'' I am a little concerned with that, with why we need international oversight on our property that has been in my family since 1910. We have been ranching now for 89 years on 60 acres of wetland. I have got some pictures here if you would want to see them of this wetland. I understand that the Chesapeake Bay is a RAMSAR site and Chesapeake Bay sure has a heck of a lot more water in it than our 60 acres down there in Southeast Arizona.
I just have a little bit more time, so I will shut up. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lindsey may be found at the end of the hearing.]
Mrs. CUBIN. Thank you, Mr. Lindsey.
Mr. Rovig?
STATEMENT OF DAVID B. ROVIG, PRESIDENT, GREYSTAR RESOURCES LTD., BILLINGS, MONTANA
Mr. ROVIG. Madam Chairman, I ask that my prepared statement be made part of the official record.
Mrs. CUBIN. Without objection.
Mr. ROVIG. Madam Chairman and members of the Committee, I am David B. Rovig, a mining engineer from Billings, Montana. I want to testify in support of H.R. 883, the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act. H.R. 883 addresses several key issues that are of great importance to protecting private property rights, access to strategic resources, and our Nation's sovereignty. These issues are, and have been, the cornerstones of our country's success.
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No nation has ever achieved or sustained greatness without access to natural resources, and certainly no great nation has ever allowed other nations to dictate its resource policy. Likewise, only those nations respecting private property rights have ever sustained greatness. These very important tenets have worked well for over 200 years but now seem to be tested at almost every turn by those who now manage our government's affairs and their handlers in the pseudo-environmental community.
Let me place in personal terms the need for H.R. 883. In 1987, I was one of the founders of Crown Butte Resources Ltd., a company that acquired a few claims in the mountains, and $40 million later had discovered a world-class gold deposit called the New World Mine in south-central Montana. Unfortunately, as it turned out, it was within three miles of a remote corner of Yellowstone Park.
That project made business sense from the very beginning. It also was a project that we knew from the beginning would be very closely monitored and it would have to meet or exceed a mountain of regulations and requirements. After a very careful review, we knew those hurdles would be difficult but passable. Crown Butte worked with the State of Montana and Wyoming and several Federal agencies to chart a course for the completion of an Environmental Impact Statement. That process alone would take several years and cost several millions of dollars.
The now well-known piracy of the process began in late February 1995 when fourteen environmental groups requested that Yellowstone National Park be listed as a World Heritage Site in Danger. They saw that we were meeting all the legal and regulatory tests, so they felt a scare tactic of placing Yellowstone on the World Heritage List of Sites in Danger might be their only chance to stop the mine. They did this with the full support of Yellowstone Park management.
The Administration's bullying tactics and complete sell-out to the obstructionist agenda of a few elitist pseudo-environmental groups resulted in an unparalleled government denial of the free enterprise system, unparalleled at least until it was used as a stepping stone to the even larger and more egregious intrusion known as Escalante-Grand Staircase land grab. What a horrible precedent. Now every objection to development in the West includes a demand for government buy-outs.
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Mining in this area was nothing new. Only with today's standards, it was to be done with a minimal impact on the environment and with the approval and oversight of many State and Federal agencies. As I mentioned before, we were in that very structured and deliberative process when a committee operating under the umbrella of the United Nations came to Yellowstone National Park, already a World Heritage Site, to see if it should be added as a site in danger. Incredibly, when the visit was first publicly announced, the Interior Department was going to pay for the travel costs of the U.N. members.
These three or four committee members, from such places as Thailand, made a three-day tourist type visit to the park during which a three-hour road tour of the New World Mine site was made. After this short visit, which consisted largely of media events and photo ops, this group of ''experts'' concluded that the New World project did endanger Yellowstone Park. In arriving at this outrageous decision, they chose to ignore the many volumes of scientific evidence that had been gathered on the project over several years and at great cost by some of the world's true experts from industry and government.
The nearly completed New World Mine Environmental Impact Statement was probably the most comprehensive technical document ever assembled for such a project. The negation of this document was a slap in the face of the many agency professionals, primarily from the Forest Service in the State of Montana, who had justifiably developed a great professional pride in their management of such a complex effort.
Past Congresses and Administrations, in conjunction with Federal agencies and State governments, have developed a very detailed and extensive review process with full public involvement. The studies and information required are extensive and exhaustive by any measure. That process should have been honored. Instead, it was scuttled. All who played by the rules paid a dear price in doing so. The State of Montana, which had invested time and talent of its best regulators, were left out of the decision altogether. Montana paid the price of losing all the economic benefit of this project and others that might have followed could bring. Partly because of decisions like this, Montana currently ranks fiftieth in the Nation's per capita income. The miners, the engineers, the businessmen, the property owners, the counties, the municipalities were all left in the economic lurch.
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To this day, I know the New World Mine could have been developed and operated in a manner that fully protected Yellowstone's resources while contributing to the Nation's economy. Please do not forget that I am a life-long Montanan and I want Yellowstone to be there for my children and grandchildren as well as yours. I was trained from a very early age that if you played by the rules you would be judged accordingly. That was not the case with the New World Mine. Three other directors and I resigned from the Crown Butte board rather than agree to take a piddling amount of Federal money and pull the plug on the project. A great deal of hard work went into a viable project and it went out the window with an ill-conceived political/media decision.
In closing, I would make three recommendations. First, pass H.R. 883 with strong provisions protecting our sovereignty. Our country developed the concept of a system of national parks. We don't now need others to tell us how they should be managed. Second, let the system work. How can we continue to invest vast sums of money in projects where a very comprehensive evaluation system is in place and then, when a select group decides it should not go forward, have the Federal Treasury pick up the bill? No mining business or other business should take on complex projects with the idea that Uncle will buy them out if the politics get too hot. And lastly, Mr. Chairman, common sense and reason have to be placed back in the process. Every day a new layer of regulation is added at some level in the process. Every day some obstructionist group uses that new regulation or some mutation of it to effect new barriers the Congress could not possibly have imagined. And every day we in the business world are forced to look outside our borders for new projects. I hope that is not what America is about. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rovig may be found at the end of the hearing.]
Mr. POMBO. [PRESIDING] Thank you, Mr. Rovig.
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Ms. Smith?
STATEMENT OF ANN WEBSTER SMITH, CHAIRMAN EMERITUS, U.S. COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL ON MONUMENTS AND SITES, WASHINGTON, DC
Ms. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for an opportunity to be here today. I am going to summarize my remarks and ask that the full remarks be included in the record.
On behalf of some 600 members of the United States Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, we oppose H.R. 883 because we feel that it would limit or deny to Americans the opportunity to protect, recognize, and honor that of their cultural and natural patrimony which is or could be recognized to be, in the language of the World Heritage Convention, ''of outstanding universal value'' and worthy of the prestige that such recognition by 156 other nations and the international community would imply.
We are a professional membership organization with members who represent architecture, archeology, art and architectural history, town planning, urban history, archives. Our organization was established in 1965 and we're concerned with the conservation, protection, rehabilitation, and enhancement of historic properties and groups of buildings, historic districts and sites, including archaeological sites, and in educational and informational programs designed to reflect that concern. U.S./ICOMOS is one of a network of independent non-governmental national committees representing similar professions, with more than five thousand members in almost a hundred countries, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, ICOMOS.
Membership in ICOMOS, like ratification of the World Heritage Convention, we have found seems to be a mark of nationhood especially on the part of the newly independent states. We heard conversations today about the fact that developing countries are not as interested in some of this legislation and some of these international conventions as more developed countries are. We don't think that is true. We think that the ''new'' countries and developing countries are even more proud of what they have and even more anxious to have what is theirs recognized and protected within their own countries and in educational terms by listing on the World Heritage list.
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More importantly in terms of the proposed legislation, H.R. 883, ICOMOS is one of the two non-governmental bodies, the other one being the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which are named in the Convention as the professional consulting bodies on nominations to the Convention. As you know, the Convention is a list of natural and cultural or man-made properties that have been determined to be of ''outstanding universal value'' to each nation and all nations.
We would like to address those aspects of this bill which address the Convention and U.S. participation in it. Rather than reducing or limiting U.S. participation, like Russell Train, who was instrumental in the development of the legislation in the first place and had a long and brilliant career on behalf of the American Government under President Nixon and others, U.S./ICOMOS would encourage this Committee to strengthen and encourage measures which would lead to greater U.S. participation in the World Heritage Convention.
The Convention has its roots in proposals put forward during the first Nixon Administration at the Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972. Russell Train headed that U.S. delegation. Subsequently, the U.S. was the first nation to ratify that Convention. Since that time, 156 other nations have ratified the Convention and some 582 properties, 117 natural properties, and 445 cultural or man-made, and 20 mixed, which are both natural and cultural, have been listed on the World Heritage list and recognized for their outstanding universal value. It is the single most accepted international convention or treaty in history.
In this country, important historic properties such as Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and Independence Hall have been listed, eight historic properties, and twelve natural properties of unique distinction, such as the Everglades and Grand Canyon National Park. In other countries, cultural properties of such undeniable outstanding universal value as the Acropolis, Westminster Abbey, and the Great Wall of China have been listed, along with whole towns or urban areas, such as Quebec City, Venice and its lagoon, and Islamic Cairo.
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In this country, as in other countries, the nomination of properties is a governmental process which determines which properties from among its national patrimony it considers to be of such ''outstanding universal value.'' In the United States, this process is directed by the National Park Service, proposed nominations are given careful professional review within the Park Service, nominations are reviewed and discussion concerning them is then published in the Federal Register. It is not a secret process.
Listing on the World Heritage List includes no international legal protection or sanction. Protection for nomination or listed properties grows out of the laws and statutes of the U.S. or any other nominating countries and the country's protective measures must be stated as a part of the nomination. In nominating a property, the U.S. or other nominating countries are neither limited nor prohibited from any proposed use or action except those limits or prohibitions that have been established by the country's own laws.
Nomination forms for properties listed call for a statement of laws or decrees which govern the protection of monuments and sites, including evidence of a master plan, a land-use plan, other plans. The nomination form asks for information as to whether these legislative or statutory measures prevent uncontrolled exploitation of the ground below the property, the demolition or reconstruction of buildings located on the property, or permit other significant changes. The nominations must also indicate what, if any, measures exist to encourage the revitalization of the property.
To examine specific provisions of H.R. 883, section 2(a), nomination and listing do not affect or diminish private interest in real property, does not impinge in any way on private property rights, does not conflict with congressional or constitutional responsibilities, and does not diminish private interest in real property.
What is the value of the Convention and the World Heritage list? Those countries that are State Parties participate in the convention and that it as a mechanism for encouraging national pride, for stimulating education concerning each country's own national treasures whether they represent history, cultural, or natural wonders. The countries where properties are located see listing on the list as a means for economic development, particularly in terms of encouraging tourism and visitation, a major source of local and foreign investment in many countries. In most countries that adhere to the Convention, a World Heritage Convention listing is sought because they know that it works to stimulate local pride, economic development, and to encourage private investment.
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In the United States—I am sorry, I am beyond my time but I would like to say this—in the United States, in spite of our own heritage, in spite of our beautiful and well-planned historic areas such as Savannah, Charleston, New Orleans, Georgetown, Annapolis, or San Antonio, no towns are listed. Why is that? It is because an element of the 1980 amendments to the National Historic Preservation Act had limited the nomination process. Even though in other countries their historic districts, their historic ensembles or quarters are listed, we in the United States cannot nominate ours because of our own limiting legislatioin and guidelines for its implementation. Many historic communities or towns are very aware of this and are very frustrated by the fact that they are not entitled to the recognition which historic districts in other countries receive.
We would encourage the House Committee on Resources to give serious consideration to the negative impact that H.R. 883 would have on existing measures for recognition such as the World Heritage process. The process grew out of a U.S. initiative, the U.S. was the first nation to ratify it, and it is a measure which has done much to achieve recognition and protection of the cultural and natural heritage which are found to be of ''outstanding universal value.'' We see this as a program which is benign, constructive, educational, and enriching. We would encourage that you try to find ways in which it can be strengthened rather than diminished or weakened. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Smith may be found at the end of the hearing.]
Mr. POMBO. Thank you.
Ms. MacLeod?
STATEMENT OF LAUREL MACLEOD, DIRECTOR OF LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC POLICY, CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA, WASHINGTON, DC
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Ms. MACLEOD. Good afternoon. I would like to thank members of the Committee for giving me the opportunity to address you today. I also request that the full text of my remarks be placed in the record.
I am the Director of Legislation for Concerned Women for America and I am here today representing CWA, which is the nation's largest public policy women's organization in the country, and here representing over 500,000 members.
As a women's