Bruce Babbitt's Goodly Archipelago

• Author: Oliver Houck
• Pages: 17-21

17

Bruce Babbitt’s

Goodly Archipelago

By Oliver Houck

Cities in the Wilder ness: A New Vis ion of Land Use in America, by

Bruce Babbitt . Island Press. 179 Pages.

From the March/ April 2006 issue of The Environmental Forum .

Bruce Babbitt is a lawyer and an envi-

ronmentalist, and like others he has

managed to stop some bad ideas in his

time. What is dierent about him, and it is all

the dierence in the world, is the number of

good ideas he has made happen as well. On

that scale, there are few living individuals who

can compare. Ohand, I can’t think of any.

Now he ha s written a book, Cities in the

Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in Amer-

ica. It begins by describing his rst visit to

the Gettysburg batt leeld, where he was dis-

tracted by a large visitors tower on the edge of

the park that could be seen from all points,

overshadowing t he hallowed ground. “It was

hard to visualize General Lee,” he writes, “rid-

ing in from the west on July rst, passing in sight of a 25-story steel tower.”

For me too. By coincidence, I’d opposed that same tower when its permits

were going through, fought the ght, and lost. e dierence is, 20 years

passing, Secretar y of the Interior Babbitt bought the tower and tore it down.

When Bruce Babbitt was appointed interior secretary under President

Clinton most of the environmental community thought we’d gotten the bet-

ter of the deal. en again, we thought t he president would back him up.

As it turned out, the president didn’t, the department’s rst-out-of-the box

initiatives to reform grazing and mining prac tices ignited a restorm from

western politicians, Clinton backed down and the secretary was on his own.

at he did so much in the next eight years w ith such uncertain support is