"Green" Leader Won't Testify
Before Congressional Hearing

SANTA FE — One of the ringleaders in a "green" scheme to drive livestock and other productive enterprises off public lands in the Southwest is refusing to testify at a congressional hearing looking into the matter.

Sam Hitt, head of the activist group Forest Guardians, claims the U.S. House field hearing on the Endangered Species Act is really geared toward helping re-elect Republican Congressman Bill Redmond.

"That is the only reason why I can imagine why a lame duck Congress would hold an ESA hearing only eight days before the election with a carefully chosen panel of ardent foes" of the law, Hitt said in a letter dated Friday to the chairman of the House Resources Committee, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska.

Kevin McDermott, a spokesman for Redmond, said Friday the hearing has been scheduled for a couple of months and is meant to give people a chance to speak directly to Congress.

And, he said, "it's the congressman's position that at the very minimum, at least until Jan. 3 (inauguration day), he is the congressman and he is going to keep working at his job."

Hitt, who is running for land commissioner on the Green Party ticket, turned down an invitation to speak Monday at the field hearing in Clovis. He said the committee already had held more than a dozen field hearings on the law, and that Forest Guardians testified in August at one in Espanola.

He complained to Young that the hearing panel is not balanced, and suggested adding at least one "conservation scientist" and one "public interest" attorney.

Young came under fire from eco-activists and the liberal media this summer when he sought information from Regional Forester Ellie Towns about the U.S. Forest Service's relationship with environmental activists and ranchers.

Young sought the names of federal employees who handled lawsuits in which the agency had acquiesed to activists' demands, and asked whether administrators knew of any employees who were members of groups named in the lawsuits or who contributed money to them. Towns provided a list of employees involved in the lawsuit, but said the agency does not keep track of what organizations its workers belong to and encourages them to participate in their communities.

Seeking to divert attention from the ongoing concerns over cozy relationships between agency staffers and activists, Hitt claimed it was improper to spend taxpayers' money to bring in people to testify at a hearing that "will serve only a political purpose" rather than objectively look at the Endangered Species Act.

"There are not a lot of Endangered Species Act issues in Clovis but there is a tremendous amount of fear, which turns into anger," he said in the interview. "The prices of all agricultural commodities are down. ... The livestock industry is suffering because of the influence of large meatpackers and NAFTA.

"They're using these threats to their industry to undermine environmental laws like the Endangered Species Act even though there is no straight line connection there."