© Copyright 2000 USA TODAY
December 14, 2000
By Tom Kenworthy

With Texas Gov. George W. Bush poised to occupy the White House for the next four years, environmental groups are ratcheting up a campaign to persuade President Clinton to designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge a national monument.

Today a coalition of conservation organizations will deliver to the White House more than 600,000 postcards urging Clinton to make the designation. That would settle a generation-long battle by barring oil and gas exploration on the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain of the refuge in northeast Alaska.

''We're ramping up for one last push,'' said Jim Waltman, refuges director for The Wilderness Society. ''We've been fighting this issue for 20 years with no clear resolution. It's time, we think, for the president to step forward and resolve this issue once and for all.''

Politically, a decision by Clinton to protect the refuge that provides important habitat for caribou, polar bears, musk oxen and 135 species of birds would be highly controversial.

It would enrage Alaska's powerful congressional delegation. It would be a slap at Bush, who endorsed oil exploration in the refuge during the campaign. And it would prevent development of anywhere from 2 billion to nearly 10 billion barrels of domestic oil at a time when tight energy supplies are causing power shortages and driving up prices.

But ever since he designated a huge monument in Utah shortly before the 1996 election, Clinton has enthusiastically wielded the unusual power presidents have under the Antiquities Act to unilaterally set aside chunks of the American landscape. So far, the administration has created 13 monuments totaling 4.8 million acres.

White House spokesman Elliot Diringer said ''there is no recommendation before the president and no process underway to evaluate any such proposal.'' But administration officials also say that Clinton could take the step even absent a recommendation from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

Environmentalists who have spoken to the president in recent weeks sense that he seems enthusiastic about the idea but cautioned them of the need to be ''careful,'' because Congress has not yet completed its budget work and could stymie any monument designation.

In 1995, when he vetoed budget legislation that would have permitted drilling in the refuge, Clinton said, ''I want to protect this biologically rich wilderness permanently.''

But the administration is cautious about creating one last monument in Alaska. Among the concerns:

* It might provoke Congress to repeal the Antiquities Act, which has been an effective land conservation tool used by many presidents since the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.

* On top of the inclusion of Alaska's Tongass National Forest in a broad directive protecting remaining roadless areas in the national forest system, it would be a second affront to Democratic Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles.

* It would inevitably result in litigation. Alaska officials insist that a provision in the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act known as the ''no more'' clause bars any monument designation without explicit congressional approval. ''The no more clause either means what it says or it doesn't,'' Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said. ''The only way to find out would be to litigate.''

* If the administration is to designate one final monument, it would be less controversial to protect the Owyhee-Bruneau Canyonlands in southwest Idaho, another top goal of the environmental community.

But with Tuesday's U.S. Supreme Court decision favoring Bush, environmental activists believe the calculus may change in their favor.

The Clinton administration ''knows that this is an absolute top priority for the environmental conservation community,'' said Charles Clusen, a policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council. ''Whether you want to call it America's Serengeti or the last great wilderness, it has become a leading icon of threatened wildland in this country.'' Error: Unable to read footer file.