Carolin H. Atchison
10/01/2005
Until the 1970s, the Republican Party had a proud history of conservation. Both Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon were environmentally conscious presidents who left formidable legacies. Things changed in 1981, when President Reagan appointed James Watt as secretary of the interior. Watt began a legacy of a different sort when he announced, “We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber”—words that resonate through the halls of Republican-controlled Washington today.
This shift has not been lost on voters. Last year, only 18 percent of respondents to an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll said they trusted Republicans to do a better job of protecting the environment. (Democrats garnered a 51 percent share.) While the policies of the Bush administration and the current Republican Congress may fully justify such findings, Republican actions on a local level tell a different story. In the November 2004 election, local conservation measures in Republican-dominated states did surprisingly well. For example, in Lake County, Fla., 60 percent of the voters chose to reelect the president, while 71 percent voted in favor of a $36 million bond to preserve drinking water sources, natural areas, parks and trails.
These results confirmed what conservationists working on a local level know: Contrary to their slash-and-burn reputation on environmental issues, many Republicans care as much as their Democratic counterparts about preserving the quality of life in their communities. Their resistance to anonymous, seemingly dictatorial national environmental directives is often grounded in their preference for small government that operates close to the people. For them, environmental policies work best when anchored in the principles of local control, fiscal fairness and a willingness to collaborate and cooperate with opponents.
Such principles are not just a smoke screen designed to obscure other agendas. They are actually facilitating the creation of environmental solutions nationwide. In California, for example, two state assemblymen, Tim Leslie, a conservative Republican from Tahoe City, and John Laird, a liberal Democrat from Santa Cruz, worked together to create the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, the state’s largest environmental conservancy, to address urban sprawl. Leslie says this forward-thinking organization endows Sierra residents with unprecedented levels of control. Instead of purchasing land outright, the conservancy makes grants to local governments and nonprofit organizations for conservation, recreational opportunities and economic growth. Six of its 13 voting board members consist of local county supervisors.
The principle of local control informs bipartisan
conservation efforts on the East Coast as well. When the real estate boom of the
1990s began to impact Cape Cod, Democrats and Republicans, real estate agents
and environmentalists deemed it critical to find the right fiscal formula to
preserve their charmed way of life. Yet, in January 1998, Cape real estate
agents and Republican state representative Thomas George opposed a ballot
initiative crafted by Democratic state representative Eric Turkington and
environmentalists, calling it unfair. When voters agreed and the measure failed,
Turkington promptly offered to work with his conservative opponents on a new
solution, an offer they accepted.
As a coalition dubbed People United for a
Cape Cod Land Bank, Turkington and George offered voters a new proposal that
offered a small surcharge on property taxes combined with state funding.
Furthermore, each town was given the power to decide how to run its own land
bank, appoint its open-space committee and, at town meetings, let residents vote
on what lands to preserve. No new bureaucracy, no hidden costs. The second
version was a resounding success adopted by all 15 towns on the Cape. Since
then, the land bank has raised about $150 million for the purchase and
protection of 5,000 acres of land for various purposes. The Cape Cod Land Bank
was the model for Massachusetts’ Community Preservation Act, which to date has
been adopted by 100 out of 142 towns in the commonwealth.
Do we dare dream
that someday the GOP will reclaim its rich conservation heritage at the national
level? Or that we will hear Bush declare, as Teddy Roosevelt did in 1910,
“Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of
insuring the safety and continuance of the nation”? As some Republicans like to
say, “Conservation is conservative.”
 | Carolin H. Atchison is a writer and conservationist living in Encinitas, Calif. |