Cason Is Definitely Not the Man

As it is, the U.S. Forest Service has not won many awards for protection of the environment. And if James E. Cason is confirmed by the U.S. Senate as overseer of the nation’s 191 million acres of forest lands, the prospects for any improvement would be bleak indeed. Therefore, the Bush Administration should withdraw Cason’s nomination as assistant secretary of agriculture for natural resources and the environment. If it will not do so, the nomination should be rejected by the Senate.

Cason has been at the Department of the Interior since James Watt’s days. His record there as a protector of the environment has been so bad that even Chairman J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee now has come out against Cason’s nomination. Johnston normally is a defender of oil companies and would-be exploiters of the public lands and an opponent of environmental protection groups.

In letter to colleagues with Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, Johnston said that when Cason faced a choice between public and private interests, he repeatedly sided with the commercial interests.

Even more damning was the testimony of R. Max Peterson, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service during the Reagan years and now an official of the International Assn. of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. In reviewing Cason’s record, Peterson--who had been a loyal Reaganite--said that Cason’s decisions were marked by a common ingredient: “They were uniformly bad when measured against any reasonable standard of public interest and fairness to the public which owns the public lands.”

After years of policies skewed toward private utilization of the forests, the nation needs someone in charge who is willing to restore the balance. Cason is not that person.