Feds Oppose Land Sales To Aid
Endangered Species Protection

WASHINGTON — The Clinton administration invokes the mantra of "endangered species" protection to justify an array of regulations and property rights restrictions, but it is balking at a proposal by Sen. Pete Domenici to use money from the sale of surplus public land for that purpose.

The federal Bureau of Land Management has identified millions of acres, including 839,000 acres in Domenici’s home state, that it can spare. Most of it consists of small, isolated parcels that offer little oil, gas, minerals or forage. Some parcels are in remote areas, but others are on the outskirts of cities and could be developed.

Domenici, R-N.M., suggested selling the land to pay landowners to entice them to improve habitats for endangered species.

The "landowner incentive program" is in a bipartisan bill pending in Congress to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act.

Domenici, Senate Budget Committee chairman, said the BLM should sell about $70 million worth of land a year for five years, then landowners could enhance their properties for rare plants and animals.

But environmental activists and Clinton administration officials want to control more land, not less.

"The environmental community ... is against selling our federal estate even for something as meritorious as giving private landowners incentives for endangered species conservation," said Cathy Carlson of the National Wildlife Federation. "Next it will be funding the road program."

Domenici said he isn't convinced the money must be used for endangered species, but he said he wants to know why the BLM is keeping surplus land when the government owes private landowners "hundreds of millions" of dollars for land it has already purchased.

"Why do we hold so much surplus property?" Domenici asked in an interview last week from a Dallas airport, where he was awaiting a plane to Washington.

"I'm saying we need to start a process to find out if that's right," he said.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt doesn't support the proposal.

"We strongly oppose this idea," Babbitt spokesman John Wright said.

Interior officials claim the BLM could not sell $70 million worth of land a year and that they also are reluctant to dump off large quantities of public land.

The BLM currently sells about 5000 acres of surplus land each year for about $2.5 million, according to BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington.

The BLM also trades unwanted land for parcels of land the agency does not own that are surrounded by BLM land.

For the plan to become law, it would have to pass the 1999 budget bill later this year, and apparently the Endangered Species Act would have to be reauthorized.