"Give them all [endangered species] a designated area and then blow it up. It sounds insane, but that's how insane the endangered-species people are."
--Sonny Bono, newly elected U.S. Representative from California
WHEN BONO TOSSED OFF THAT LINE during the fall campaign, he may have been merely poking fun at the save-the-planet folks, just as he used to trade put-downs with his old partner, Cher. But underneath the comic exaggeration was a serious message. The noises coming from Bono and many of his fellow Republican signers of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" signal a radical shift in Congress's attitude toward environmental issues-a shift that may bode ill for the health of snail darters, spotted owls and even the human species.
The change is symbolized in the office of Alaska's only Representative, Republican Don Young. On his walls are more animal heads and hides-and the guns that made them trophies-than in almost any room in Washington outside the Smithsonian. Young is the greens' worst nightmare.
Yet Young claims to love nature as much as anyone else. "I'm a true conservationist," he proclaims. "I'm one who believes that from the lands God has given this great nation comes the wealth of the nation." For too long, he argues, "protectionists" have built walls of red tape around that wealth. He wants to tear those barriers down so that it would be easier to tap-in a responsible way, he insists-into the nation's oil, timber and mineral treasures. Young's views are of no small consequence; he's the new chairman of the House Committee on Resources.
In that role, Young will be a leader in Gingrich's drive to pass the G.O.P.'s government-curbing contract. Of course, nothing in that heralded document attacks environmental preservation directly. For who, after all, would be against preserving the air, land and water? A TIME/CNN poll last month found that 88% of Americans consider environmental protection either "one of the most important" U.S. problems or at least "very important," while only 23% think antipollution regulations "have gone too far." But the same poll indicated that Americans support the Republican drive to reform the regulatory process.
Instead of using the word environment, the contract's provisions-some of which are embodied in legislation already approved by the House and Senate-speak of dropping "unfunded mandates," improving "risk assessment" and protecting "private-property rights." Yet in the opinion of the greens and the Clinton Administration, these are code words signaling a determined G.O.P. effort not only to rein in government regulation but also to hamper enforcement of every major environmental law, from the Safe Drinking Water Act to the Endangered Species Act.
Not since the reign of James Watt, Ronald Reagan's Interior Secretary, have environmentalists been so shaken. "This is James Watt times 10," says Brett Hulsey, the Sierra Club's Midwest representative. "These people want to turn our natural resources back to the robber barons."