Alone on the range - controversies stirred by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt's environmental policies

LAST year when President Clinton considered nominating Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to the Supreme Court, environmentalists screamed: Babbitt was too good to lose from Interior. Anxious to please the politically crucial West, Clinton left him where he was. Now, a year and another Supreme Court opening later, Babbitt will probably be passed over again--this time because furious Western senators vowed to torpedo his nomination.

Babbitt's efforts to raise grazing fees, exert federal authority over water rights, and tighten environmental regulatons have stoked a sequel to the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s. A "Fire Babbitt" resolution is circulating rapidly in Western communities. So are bumper stickers with messages like "I Hunt Coyotes, Wolves, and Babbitts," and "Bobbitt Babbitt."

Even Greens have been turned off by the man the cowboys hate. Since his defeat on rangeland policy by filibustering senators in November, he reached out to ranchers, causing environmentalists to accuse him of caving into political pressure. When in February Babbitt fired Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Jim Baca, a former Wilderness Society activist, his closest allies accused him of sacrificing Baca to save his own neck. "We're joining the livestock industry and calling for his ouster," Jim Fish, president of the Public Lands Action Network, told the Phoenix Gazette. "I think he's no longer effective."

Fish may have a point. Babbitt's plans to overhaul federal mining policy, for example, are stalled because Representative George Miller (D., Calif.) has refused to appoint House conferees on mining reform until the rangelands issue is resolved. Environmentalist lawmakers are so unhappy with his new proposal they say they'll kill it unless major changes are made. "It simply doesn't represent the level of reform we've been working on for these many, many years," said Mike Synar (D., Okla.).

The turmoil is a far cry from expectations when Babbitt joined the Administration. Then, he was seen as a star of the Clinton Cabinet, an experienced manager who had been tested on the national scene during his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988. "Into this contentious environment steps Babbitt as a self-proclaimed protector of the land as well as a kind of national conciliator," announced Rolling Stone magazine in a July 1993 interview.

The scion of a prominent Northern Arizona ranching family, Babbitt attended Harvard Law School and later served as president of the League of Conservation Voters. In his nine years as governor, he earned a reputation as a problem-solver by, as he likes to say, "getting everyone together and rolling around in the dirt." The tactic served him well in one of the high points of his gubernatorial career, negotiating Arizona's historic groundwater agreement.

But Babbitt, despite his family ties to ranching, had aligned himself firmly with environmental groups by the time he left the governor's mansion in 1987. "From this day on," he told the Sierra Club in a 1986 speech, "we must recognize the new reality that the highest and best, most productive use of Western land will usually be for public purposes--watershed, wildlife, and recreation."

Once in the Cabinet, he packed his department with former leaders of the League of Conservation Voters, Wilderness Society, World Wildlife Fund, and other liberal environmental groups. Criticizing the Reagan and Bush Administrations for foot-dragging on environmental reform, he created the National Biological Survey by fiat and stepped up enforcement of the Endangered Species Act.

Still, there was little panic in the West until he tackled grazing. His original proposal, which would have quadrupled fees and increased the BLM's authority, touched off an uproar. Babbitt's "get down in the dirt" response was to fly back West in April of last year for a series of public forums. Ranchers left the meetings assured that their fears of economic ruin would be addressed. When the final proposal was released in August, they were horrified. "Everyone went to that dog-and-pony show thinking things would be different, then he comes back with the very same thing," said Representative Craig Thomas (R., Wyo.). "Their pattern is to say one thing and do another."

The latest example of such doubledealing coincided with the release of Babbitt's new rangeland plan. Known as the "Colorado model," the proposal came about after eight grueling work sessions in Colorado in which Babbitt met with Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Governor Roy Romer, ranchers, and the few environmentalists who didn't boycott the meetings. The sessions produced the idea of setting up community advisory boards, but conferees left blank the recommendations on grazing fees.

Most participants, including Campbell, were confident Babbitt wouldn't go for a fee-hike back in Washington. For the next few weeks, Campbell's office called the Interior Department regularly to see if advance copies of the proposal were available. On March 3, Campbell says, Babbitt told him personally that the recommendations would not be ready for two weeks, but that his office would receive a courtesy briefing before their release. Within hours of their meeting, however, copies of the proposal were leaked to a handful of representatives who advocated higher grazing fees. Neither Campbell nor other Western senators opposed to higher fees learned of the proposal until they read about it two days later in the Washington Post.