MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College politics professor Craig Allin says environmentalists decrying the appointment of Gale Norton as secretary of the interior are “paying more attention to internal politics than they are worrying about environmental policy.”
“Some things we’ll see (from Norton) we’re not going to like. But for the environmental corps to decide before the fact that the appointee is bad is a good way to burn bridges,” says Allin, an expert in history, politics, policy, management and law as it applies to the preservation of wilderness areas in national parks, national forests, national wildlife refuges and other federally owned lands.
Norton is a protege of Reagan-era Interior Secretary James Watt, who was such an enemy of environmentalists that “memberships in environmental organizations skyrocketed,” boosting their budgets, Allin says.
Rather than denounce Norton, Allin says, environmentalists should say, “We are worried, concerned. There are environmental treasures that could be lost and we hope the new secretary of the interior, once she has all the facts, will agree with us it is tragic to lose resources.”
Allin is the author of “The Politics of Wilderness Preservation” (1982) and an upcoming book, “Wilderness Wars: Protecting Nature in National Parks and Wilderness Areas”; and editor of “The International Handbook of National Parks and Nature Reserves” (1990), “Natural Resources” (three volumes, 1998) and the “Encyclopedia of Environmental Issues” (three volumes, 2000). He has written for numerous encyclopedias including “World Book,” which carried his article on “National Parks of the World.” He has traveled extensively in the wilderness areas of the American West and has interviewed hundreds of land managers in Washington, D.C., and throughout the West. He is the only civilian graduate of the Forest Service’s Region 6 Wilderness Management School in Oregon.