congressional_record: CREC-1996-10-21-pt1-PgE1941
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| granule_id | date | congress | session | volume | issue | title | chamber | granule_class | sub_granule_class | page_start | page_end | speakers | bills | citation | full_text |
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| CREC-1996-10-21-pt1-PgE1941 | 1996-10-21 | 104 | 2 | H.R. 3752, THE AMERICAN LAND SOVEREIGNTY PROTECTION ACT | HOUSE | EXTENSIONS | ALLOTHER | E1941 | E1942 | [{"name": "Don Young", "role": "speaking"}] | [{"congress": "104", "type": "HR", "number": "3752"}, {"congress": "104", "type": "HR", "number": "3752"}, {"congress": "104", "type": "HR", "number": "3753"}] | 142 Cong. Rec. E1941 | Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 143 (Monday, October 21, 1996) [Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 143 (Monday, October 21, 1996)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages E1941-E1942] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] H.R. 3752, THE AMERICAN LAND SOVEREIGNTY PROTECTION ACT ______ speech of HON. DON YOUNG of alaska in the house of representatives Friday, October 4, 1996 Mr. YOUNG of Alaska. Mr. Speaker, in a rollcall on September 26, 1996, the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act of 1996, which would reestablish the Congress as the ultimate decisionmaker in managing public lands and maintain sovereign control of lands in the United States, failed--by a 246 to 178 vote--to receive the two-thirds majority necessary to suspend the rules and pass the bill. The bill simply requires congressional approval of international land designations in the United States, primarily UNESCO World Heritage Sites and Biosphere Reserves. These designations, as presently handled, are an open invitation to the international community to interfere in U.S. domestic land-use decisions. I am amazed that a single Member of Congress would oppose legislation requiring congressional oversight of international land designations within the borders of the United States. What is unreasonable about Congress insisting that no land be designated for inclusion in international land use programs without the clear and direct approval of Congress? What is unreasonable about having local citizens and public officials participate in decisions on designating land near their homes for inclusion in an international land program? Many, many Americans from all sections of our country have called my office to say that they are concerned about the lack of congressional oversight over UNESCO international land designations in the United States and to express their support for H.R. 3752. I want to say to them that this fight has not ended. I plan to introduce this bill again in the 105th Congress. I would like to include the following recent articles about the debate over H.R. 3752. I urge my colleagues to read these commentaries. Congress Fails To Veto U.N. Role in National Parks (By Cliff Kincaid) In a sign of mounting anti-United Nations sentiment, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) got about 60% of House members--246 to 178 (see rollcall next week)--to vote in favor of his ``American Land Sovereignty Protection Act'' (H.R. 3753) on September 26, but because the bill didn't get the two-thirds approval needed under suspension of the rules procedures, it ultimately failed. Thirty-three Democrats voted for the popular piece of legislation, 15 Republicans voted against it. The bill would have required congressional approval before federal officials seek special U.N. status for U.S. parks and public lands. It was brought to the House floor just two weeks after Rep. Young had convened an informative September 12 hearing of his House Resources. Committee to highlight how the United Nations has been brought in to ``protect'' literally tens of millions of acres of federal land. The hearing focused on how President Clinton complied with a U.N. recommendation to kill a gold mine project outside Yellowstone National Park. Citizens and local officials from Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado and even New York testified that the United Nations has been involved in labeling public lands in their communities as World Heritage Sites and Biosphere Reserves without their knowledge or consent. They said the U.N. involvement including proposals for ``buffer zones'' around these areas, threatens private property rights, property values and economic development. In the United States there are now 20 World Heritage Sites, designated under the terms of a 1972 treaty, and 47 Biosphere Reserves, designated under a 1970 U.N.-sponsored ``Man and the Biosphere'' program that has been implemented without the benefit of a treaty. The programs are run out of the U.N Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris. According to Rep. Young, these U.N.-designated areas comprise more than 51 million acres--68% of all National Parks, Preserves and Monuments, including the Statute of Liberty and Independence Hall. Unwilling to take the side of the United Nations against Congress, not one major environmentalist group accepted an invitation to testify and no Democrats on the committee showed up at the hearing to oppose the bill. The Clinton Administration did, however, send Assistant Interior Secretary George Frampton to testify against the Young bill. Frampton was clearly perturbed by Young's effort to promote his legislation by asking his congressional colleagues, ``Is Boutros Boutros-Ghali zoning land in your district?'' Ironically, Frampton's own dealings with the United Nations in the Yellowstone matter were a major factor in prompting the hearings and the proposed legislation. clinton's yellowstone deal Circumventing the lawful process of completing an Environmental Impact Statement to determine what threat, if any, was posed by a proposed gold mine, Frampton last year invited a foreign U.N. delegation to make a brief visit to Yellowstone, which is both a World Heritage Site and a Biosphere Reserve, to call for a ``buffer zone'' around the park and to declare it ``in danger'' from the mining project. The leader of the delegation was a German, Bernd Von Droste, who has called for global energy taxes to enable the United Nations to better ``protect'' these areas. After the U.N intervention, the mining company, Crown Butte Mines Inc., agreed to White House demands to cancel the project in return for a vague presidential promise of some federal land somewhere else. ``This President believed the U.N. has more value than the Congress,'' Rep. Young angrily declared, vowing to push his sovereignty bill and subject Clinton's Yellowstone deal to congressional scrutiny. But the administration's Frampton dismissed these concerns. ``People are nervous the U.N. is coming,'' he sniffed. He insisted the U.N. designations simply promote environmental cooperation and actually serve to attract tourists. When told, however, that the United Nations had complained that Yellowstone was too crowded by tourists, he just replied, ``I was not aware of that.'' Indeed, environmental groups not only wanted the gold mine stopped, but have suggested greatly restricting tourism within the park. Myron Ebell of Frontiers of Freedom, a group started by former Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R.-Wyo.), said Frampton was part of a ``cabal'' of federal agencies and environmental groups that regard the United Nations as a `'weapon'' in their campaign to deindustrialize America. Paul C. Jones, executive director of the Colorado-based Minerals Exploration Coalition, said the involvement of the United Nations in Yellowstone was ``unprecedented'' and amounted to an international ``land grab.'' The House support for the Young legislation is only one indication that opposition is building. Rep. Tim Hutchinson (R.-Ark.) testified that citizens in his own state, including a group called ``Take Back Arkansas,'' had thwarted the designation of the Ozark National Forest as a Biosphere Reserve because they didn't want their ``prized national treasures'' subjected to international agreements that might conflict with U.S. law. In a case involving Mount Mitchell State Park in North Carolina, citizen action forced park authorities to actually take the words ``United Nations'' off a wooden sign leading into the park. For her part, Nina Sibal of UNESCO testified that passage of Young's legislation was ``a sovereign decision'' of the United States. Her French UNESCO associate, Pierre Lasserre, however, did venture the opinion that the name of the ``Man and the Biosphere'' program should be changed because it sounds ``sexist.'' U.N.-Sponsored Aliens Land in Yellowstone (By Gayle M.B. Hanson) The Clinton administration allowed an obscure treaty to establish U.N. authority over Yellowstone National Park, the Statue of Liberty and other American sites. House Democrats backed the power grab. Okay, so maybe there were only a handful of individuals involved, and maybe they didn't actually arrive in the dead of night protected by whirring black helicopters and hell- bent on clandestine maneuvers. But the fact that four members of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's, or UNESCO's, World Heritage Committee traveled from halfway around the globe to the Idaho-Montana- Wyoming border area in summer 1995 to investigate a ``dangerous'' situation unfolding at Yellowstone National Park has some people still scratching their heads in disbelief. The aforementioned (dare we say it?) aliens were invited to poke around on their fact-finding mission at Yellowstone by Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks George Frampton Jr. Frampton, at the behest of the U.S. Park Service and a cavalcade of environmental groups including the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society and the Wilderness Society, an organization Frampton once led, officially sought the intervention of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee to remedy what they called ``extremely serious threats'' by a proposed gold mine near the park. The initial correspondence from the environmental groups to the World Heritage Centre in March 1995 requested that Yellowstone be put on the List of the World Heritage in Danger due to the mine that was planned on its perimeter. The World Heritage Centre followed up with a letter to Frampton in June [[Page E1942]] requesting a detailed analysis of the site to determine whether it should be included for consideration as endangered at their July meeting in Paris. On June 27, Frampton responded on behalf of the Clinton administration in a lengthy letter in which he pleaded for intervention by the U.N. group and urged that international investigators immediately be sent to Yellowstone. ``[Interior] Secretary Babbit and I are informed of the nongovernmental conservation group concerns as transmitted to the Centre,'' Frampton wrote to Bernd von Droste, the World Heritage Centre director. ``We believe that a potential danger to the values of the park and surrounding waters and fisheries exists and the Committee should be informed that the property as inscribed in the World Heritage List is in danger.'' In short, invoking a madcap treaty, the Clinton administration accepted U.N. sovereignty in these matters and called upon a U.N. agency to save Yellowstone. Several months later four individuals from the Centre flew to the rescue. ``I was there the entire time they visited,'' says Paul C. Jones, executive director of the Minerals Exploration Coalition, a mining-advocacy group. ``We were in the midst of a very long, very serious, congressionally mandated process to produce an environmental-impact statement on the mine proposed for the park. We were strictly following the rules as spelled out by the National Environmental Protection Act. When suddenly, with the appearance of the U.N., what had been an ordinary process became a political debate. And it was apparent that these people had made up their minds before they even got there.'' During their visit to the proposed site for New World Mine, north of Cooke City, Mont., the four visitors had the opportunity to interact with many of the more common local species including environmentalists, park-service representatives and mining-industry honchos. In fact, each member of the visiting U.N. team traveled in an overland vehicle (read Jeep) with their own locally supplied good-guy environmentalist and evil mine representative. This allowed for a continuing dialogue to be maintained wherein each side could bark loudly at the other. The visitors also took time out from their research to discuss the future of the park with the many reporters who had gathered from around the globe. Adul Wichiencharoen of Thailand, who heads the World Heritage Committee, went so far as to tell a reporter from Montana's Billings Gazette that the park might be improved by the addition of several million additional acres of land. ``Certainly the forest areas around Yellowstone belong to the same ecosystem,'' he said. ``All of these lands must have protection so their integrity is not threatened.'' The end result was that the visitors returned to the World Heritage Centre, presented their findings in Berlin that November and the world body voted to place Yellowstone on its lists of endangered sites. The resulting international bad press effectively derailed the permit process and in late August the mine owners agreed to a land swap with the U.S. government, ridding them of their parcel of $65 million worth of property in a location yet to be determined. Where was Yogi Bear when he was needed? It isn't certain. But the circus of events that took place in the mountains was enough to send House Resources Committee Chairman Don Young of Alaska to urge passage of the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act of 1996 faster than you could say Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Young's proposal simply provided that Congress be allowed to assert its authority over what American landmarks make the World Heritage List. The World Heritage List is a product of the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and National Heritage, a treaty taking precedence at law over the U.S. Constitution. Since it was adopted in 1972 (the United States was its initiator and first signatory), the convention has been used to project the authority of a U.N. agency over an ever-growing list of officially designated cultural and natural sites. Commemorative photos are taken. Plaques are installed at qualifying locations. National sovereignty is eroded. At present 496 cultural and natural sites throughout the world are included on the list. They cover a diverse compendium, including such buildings as Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and such areas of regional and national interest as the Florida Everglades and Mount Everest. ``Land designations under the World Heritage and Biosphere Reserve programs have been created with virtually no congressional over-sight and no congressional hearings. The public and local governments are rarely consulted,'' says Young. Instead, in the case of the World Heritage List, sites generally are recommended for this internationalization by the National Park Service. Twenty such sites are within the confines of the U.S. borders; two additional sites, Yellowstone and the Everglades, are on the list of endangered heritage sites. Hundreds of additional sites around the globe are pending inclusion on the list. If neither the first McDonald's nor Yankee Stadium has yet to be included, it could be an oversight. Certainly the UNESCO folks are looking to improve their holdings. ``An analysis of the World Heritage List has shown that the industrialized world, religious Christian movements, historical cities, historical periods and `elitist' architecture are over-represented,'' according to World Heritage Centre documents. Well, so much for getting McDonald's on the list. Now the World Heritage Centre is willing to admit that for the moment it is a dog that barks but has no bite. It can't yet force the United States to do anything about its national parks or turn over the Statue of Liberty. But these people are nothing if not ambitious. Although UNESCO admits that it has no enforcement teeth (which begs the question of why there should be such a list in the first place), the Clinton administration first strongly asserted its desire that Yellowstone be put on the endangered list and then opposed passage of Young's bill, which would have taken nomination of sites to the World Heritage List out from under the relatively opaque operations of the Interior Department and placed them in the hands of Congress. ``If Congress wishes to micromanage these international programs, it could assume that responsibility,'' claimed Rep. George Miller of California, the senior Democratic member of the House Resources Committee. ``However, it is very ironic that this Congress is willing to spend its waning days fixing programs that are not broken. . . .'' Critics slap their heads, roll their eyes and wonder if a treaty really has ceded American sovereignty over the Statue of Liberty and Independence Hall. They note with suspicion the administration's loathing of the proposed Young bill, going so far as to promise a presidential veto had it passed. They ask why we have Clinton protecting a list that supposedly doesn't matter--from a bill that supposedly doesn't matter. Some who testified in favor of the bill argue strongly that congressional oversight is constitutional necessity. ``If these international programs are seen as harmless because they are merely symbolic, Congress is entitled to think competing concerns also deserve `symbolic' recognition,'' testified Jeremy A. Rabkin, an expert in constitutional law from Cornell University. ``[The bill] seems to me a modest but useful statement that global enthusiasms should not be allowed to run roughshod over our traditional constitutional principles.'' But if the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act of 1996 didn't stand a chance this time around, and the bill, while it received a majority of votes, did not receive the two- thirds vote necessary for it to pass under the rules of suspension, it still is not a fight that's finished. Young has vowed to keep the pressure on when the 105th Congress convenes. ``While I'm pleased that a strong majority of the House supported this legislation, I'm amazed that a single member of Congress would oppose having congressional oversight of international land designations within the borders of the United States,'' Young says. Clinton administration claims of U.N. authority over Yellowstone and the Statue of Liberty are meanwhile continuing to give conservatives a bad case of dyspepsia. ____________________ |